Monsters

“Derek! For heaven's sake, why haven’t you phoned the landlord yet? Look at this mess – come look at the ceiling!” shouted Eimile Blake, a young women who appeared to be in her late twenties – though she had the rough voice of someone who had been smoking for far longer than twenty years. She wore a scowl quite well, as though she had been scowling for so long that it had become her default facial expression; “Derek” obviously wasn’t winning any “boyfriend of the year” awards. “Derek! I am beginning to believe that you are dating me for my telly – get off of your arse, will you?” she called once more.

The ceiling that her eyes were pinned to had once been a consistent white throughout the kitchen, but was now flawed in one of the room’s corners, where what appeared to be a large water stain had appeared. Three years the couple had lived in that apartment, and never had they had any trouble until that evening. The feisty women had called to Derek from the kitchen, ordering him to phone the landlord the moment she’d noticed the stain, but he’d ignored her, and the dark imperfection had spread since then. She had expected him to obey her at some point that evening, and had turned back to the sink to finish scrubbing the dishes – a mistake on her part. “Damn it, Derek!”

Once more, there was no reply. “That idiot…” she grumbled with her slender arms folded over her chest, her eyes dancing with a fire that was sure to get the man to pay her some attention. She loved Derek, she did- so much that it caused her heart to ache when he ignored her, and when she found herself forced to shout- but there were times when she had to ask herself if there was anything within that thick skull of his. “Der (pronounced d-air)!” She’d passed through the sitting room’s doorway, but as she peered in the general direction of the couch (there was no other light in the room than that of the television), she found that he was no longer seated there. Inexplicably, she began to feel as though her stomach had gone completely empty – as though there was a dark pit in her stomach, and only an answer to her next question could fill it. “Where are you, Der? Where has he got to now…” It was more than likely that her boyfriend had simply wondered upstairs, but she simply could not shake that bothersome feeling.

“Yeah, yeah!” a male voice called from the next floor, though it was quite difficult for her to hear him from where she stood at the bottom of the staircase. She was only just able to catch the words that the man called. An overwhelmingly powerful feeling of relief washed over her, though she did not understand her sudden concern; it was not uncommon for Derek to retire early after a hard day’s work… watching television. He really was an idiot.

“Get down here, you git,” she replied, bouncing back immediately.

With her arms still held against her chest, Eimile returned to the kitchen, taking her place before the sink once more. She extended her hand to turn on the faucet – but something caught her attention; a faint dripping noise that caused her ears to twitch.

Drip.
Drrrrrip.
Drip.

“Oh bugger,” she groaned. It must have been the ceiling. It had to be. How much would it cost to repair if the landlord decided not to pick up the bill? She whipped around on the spot, her hair twirling with her, and immediately returned her eyes to the stain. It had begun to drip, but the substance that was seeping through the ceiling appeared far darker in color that it had when the imperfection had first formed. She slid towards the area quickly, her shoes carrying her across the recently-mopped floor.

The substance on the floor was thick, and it smelt so fawl that she staggered backwards after getting a wiff of it- but as she continued to eye the small puddle that had formed just beneath the spot on the ceiling, she came to a disturbing realization: “Blood...?"

“Well now, I had to get your attention somehow,” A male spoke as he stepped out of the poorly lit sitting room and into the kitchen. He wore a morbid smirk, and blood stains upon his shirt sleeves to match. He had slicked his dark brown hair back out of his face, making his blood-chilling eyes that much harder to look away from. “What have you done!? Where is Derek? Eimile shrieked, advancing on the stranger foolishly – but his expression did not change, nor did his overconfidently casual stance in the doorway. “I put the man out of his misery; I can not bear the thought of someone walking about the Earth with such an ordinary appearance- and yet, there are so many unattractive human beings, aren’t there? Everywhere you look.I suppose it is just the way humans are. You, on the other hand”- A low whistle fell from Vito’s lips.

Vito was quite skilled at acting as though he had stumbled across the women with her brilliant, red hair by mistake – but in truth, the female’s hair was to blame for the death of her lover. It wasn’t like Vito to go to such lengths to get his hands on such a particular sort female, but as it were, Eimile was the last, naturally redheaded women that he had been able to locate within fifty miles of Knockturn Alley- other than Jack, who did not really count.

“You truly are beautiful. Fair skin and all-” Vito began, taking another step into the kitchen, but his words were cut short when Eimile attempted to smash her right fist into the side of his head. Had she known better than to throw a roundhouse punch at him and have gone with something a bit more unexpected, perhaps she would have succeeded. Vito saw the flashy move coming at an instant, however, and took hold of her lower arm, curling his freshly-trimmed fingernails into her skin. Even when they were cut below the tip of his fingers, they stung as they ran along Eimile’s flesh – though perhaps it was out of disgust, rather than pain, that she flinched.

"Get off of me, you creepy-arse son-of-a-b!tch!” she hollered as she attempted to free herself from his grasp and hold back the tears that had begun to form in the corners of her eyes simultaneously, but Vito would not have that. He had never taken kindly to insults; despite his overconfidence, he did not have the self control to shrug off such a remark - and in his mind, there was no need for such actions if he could do as he pleased in order to punish the girl. He glanced in the direction of the crimson liquid that had begun to seep through the ceiling. It had formed a large puddle just below the spot where Derek’s mutilated body lay by that point. Perhaps a trip upstairs would kill the girl's confidence – no; he liked it when she fought to break free. She did not need to see Derek to understand that it was her fault; she just needed a bit of clarification -something which Vito was more than willing to provide her with.

“That is no way to treat me, darling; it took me days to find you – though I must admit, the search became quite simple when I started asking questions. All I had to was tell a group of locals that I was looking for a particular redhead; a women who I claimed to have met a year ago in this shabby town, and who I wished to reunite with. They pointed me in the right direction the moment I closed my mouth.” Vito began, looking at Eimile through his thick, black eyelashes. “They told me quite a bit about you, too. They claimed you had a boyfriend… but you know, I think they were fibbing, because I don’t see any such man in this house.”

“My hair? You killed my Derek because of my hair?” she squawked. Ahhh, Vito thought, there it is. There was that guilt that he had been aiming for. "It was all her fault, and she’d be better off dead" – you know, the usual miserable thoughts that haunted humans when they'd done something despicable. He could almost smell the guilt on her.

-

“She was dragged out of her house by her ankles! Something had a hold of her – a man, but he wasn’t a man! He kept flickering about like some kind of ghost!” the neighbors would explain to the police when they arrived, but Vito and Eimile would be far from that run-down road by that time. The witnesses would be shunned by the town’s people, and would forever be considered insane- a situation which Vito would later claim had been intentional, though in truth he had merely gotten sloppy, and had allowed the old couple across the street to watch as he’d dragged his newest toy across the road. Vito was becoming far too distracted; his ego often blinded him, causing him to slip up in ways that he would not have, had he been paying more attention to his surroundings, than to himself.

Though, in all honesty, he would have it no other way. He enjoyed himself when he forgot of his troubles, and of everything that Jack Dyllan had attempted to teach him in the past. What was the point in pretending to be human if he so craved their destruction? There wasn’t one. Vito had been fooling himself when he’d fought his instincts for the young girl’s sake.

Eimile stopped moaning; she'd drifted off to another world after the third minute of attempting to hold her hold her head above the pavement. She acted like a fighter, but just look at her; she's out cold! Jack wouldn’t do that - not even that winy Chase Moor would; they’d both stick around for the fun.

Vito stopped at Knockturn’s edge. He could not see around the corner, for the evening’s shadows had cloaked the alley in darkness, but he could feel that he was near his home from where he stood. His Kingdome. Vito had been planning to bring Eimile home with him; after all, he had spent three days tracking the girl down – but something about the fact that she had given up so early on in the game put him off. He glanced in the female’s direction, eying her hair, which had fanned out around her head on the street when he’d dropped her. “What a waste of time. Oh, how I hate cowards…” he grumbled. He had begun to straighten his red, Italian tie, and adjust the blood-stained collars of his white shirt – a sign of boredom. He had grown bored of Eimile, and he needed something new to distract him from the aching that he was experiencing at his very core.

Silent and utterly deadly, Zada stood in the shadows, watching, while some bon vivant had done some sort of half-assed kidnapping--or at least thats what it looked like. Zada liked Knockturn Alley, and she was vowing to control it. She hated all the overly self righteous people in Diagon Alley. She was dressed in flawlessly tailored, form fitting charcoal gray silk, and she had her very full black cloak over that, with the hood drawn up. Her tall heels in a dark gunmetal color were nearly unnoticeable under the cloak. She had handcrafted, contemporary jewelry in Hematite and Chinese Writing Stone, set in platinum. She had decided today to not dress to impress the white lighters. She had decided to be herself, and she was every bit as icy and dangerous as she looked.

People steered away from her in Knockturn. They knew better. In Diagon Alley, they were just too stupid to know when they were better off. She was constantly told about how beautiful and alluring she was. To Zada, those were merely code words for "Victim Here." When she tired of being bothered by the saviors of the wizarding world, she merely killed them and apparated their corpses into some hinterland where they would most likely be eaten before anyone found them. She wasn't keeping tallies on how many she'd left in her wake. There was no point in numbers. Murder was simply a way of removing an annoyance.

Few knew who she really was, much less what her purpose was to be back here in London again. And that worked out well for her. The less they knew, until the proper time, the better. And today, so far, had been profitable. She had investigated, sought out a traitor in her midst, lured him home last night, and this morning, she had sent his naked form into the center of a woods in a muggle park. That had amused her. It would be one of their unsolvable cases just trying to figure out what the deuce the cause of death had been, much less his identity or where the hell his clothes had gone.

For the moment, though, she spent a bit of time studying the bon vivant and his designer style. She did like that bit. She appreciated anyone who had any style about them, and he did have that much going for him. Then it dawned on her. He was far from average. And there was something more about him that was refreshing. Not so pure and free of all iniquity. But his mark was about as fulfilling as a wet dishrag. Not much of a victory on his part, that was for certain. It did make her a trifle curious about him, though. She decided to investigate.

She lazily walked up the alley towards the dark haired male, her gunmetal stilettos tapping out a rather lanquid rhythm as she walked up to him. "Are you trying to call the aurors, Darling?" she said to him softly, her voice in a rather slithering tone. "Or were you merely intending to frighten her out of her senses? Either way, that looks like it was rather anti-climactic, was it not?"