``holy water cannot help you now {alucard}

[em]

She couldn't...remember how she'd gotten up here.

There were lights, all around her - as far as the eye could see, and down below, too. She'd heard about New York City at night, how everything would light up, how beautiful it was...but now all of it just seemed bright, too bright, not the way night was supposed to be. Night was supposed to be dark. She shied away from the brightness and slumped down against the short wall that blocked off the edge of the building's roof. Her hair, part of it pulled back, whipped in the wind, occasionally blowing into her face - but she didn't so much as blink when it did. In fact, the child did not move at all, not even a muscle. She merely sat, cross-legged, her hands limply at her sides....just sort of staring blankly ahead of her.

How had she gotten up here? There was somewhere she was supposed to be, people who were probably noticing she was gone, but right now none of that really seemed relevant in Em's mind. She seemed to be in some sort of trance as she sat there, slipping in and out of conscious thought. One moment she'd be thinking about how strange all of this was, and the next - well, the next she'd fade into darkness, aware of a lingering presence that was not her own...in her mind? Her body? She wasn't sure what the feeling was, or how to precisely describe it, this...this sensation of not being herself. Maybe she was sick? There were other symptoms - feeling drained of energy, the consistent headaches she'd been getting, the strange bruising that took the shape of fingermarks she'd occasionally find on her arms. Maybe she was dying! Blood diseases could give you bruises, and cancer could give you headaches, and...and...

...And just as she'd been beginning to panic, that strange sense of calm took over her again. Well. Perhaps calm wasn't the right word, it was just...nothingness. Like she was just floating, not even existing anymore. Except that she wasn't alone. There was always someone else there, in the void with her. Her amber eyes glazed over again as she slipped back into her previous state, looking like nothing more than a life-sized, child-like doll as she sat limply on the edge of the building. The wind was cold, chilling, nipping at her skin, but the sensation was oddly numbed, and she paid little attention to it. There were more important things to pay attention to her. The darkness. The whispering in her ear, murmuring things in some foreign language, things she could not understand, words that held a dark, heavy weight - and yet were somehow so soothing.

And then came a soft, tickling sensation on her knee. A large brown moth had landed there, fluttering its wings with a slight buzz. Though the sight of any sort of insect normally would have made her scream, Em didn't so much as flinch. Didn't so much as look down at it. Then came another, this one landing on her hand - two more seconds later, fluttering onto her dress. Faster and faster, more and more frequently, the moths seem to appear out of nowhere and land on the girl - evidently drawn to her as they would be to a flame. And still Em did not move, continuing to stare unblinkingly into the darkness.

[Alucard]

For a long while, or so it would seem, Em was alone, only the strange moths keeping her company. And then....then there would be the distinctive squeaking and flapping of a bat in flight. A vampire bat. It darted past the building, swerving radically and plunging into a brief dive before spiralling back up. As it cleared the level of the roof, it was joined by several more, seemingly sweeping out from the darkness. In only a few moments, there was an entire swarm of them, countless dozens of them, perhaps even hundreds. The squeaking, shrieking, and flapping they made was almost deafening as they swarmed about the rooftop.

And then, it all stopped. They all, as one, landed on the roof's edges, going deathly silent. The darkness on the wall before Em would seem to split apart; veins of crimson and a darker shadow running through it. Numerous eyes opened, all red as blood and glowing almost too faintly to notice. They stared about, unblinkingly, before, one by one, they came to fixate on the girl.

Just as quickly as they had appeared, the eyes all blinked out of sight, fading as if they had never been. The darker shadow and veins in the blackness crawled together, into one singular mass. The last eye blinked shut....and was replaced by two pinpricks of red light, glowing brightly and eerily in the shadow. The bats all at once resumed their shrieking and spread out, flying way as if in terror.

The flapping of a coat in the wind heralded his first step. The Count's unnaturally heavy stride hit the rooftop with a noise like a hammer blow, and the wind stopped. The air still as death, Alucard stepped out of the shadow, into the moonlight. And he simply stood there, staring down at the girl, face hidden in the shadow of his fedora, with only the glowing red of his eyes showing.