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It was the night after their only lead on the case culminated in a wild chase around town. A chase in any situation was a competition, this time more than ever, and she’d had to tap out mid-race after Edgar got stuck in a fence and freeing him took the better part of a quarter of an hour. By the time she’d pulled him loose (not without a copious amount of exasperated teasing about his waistline), the shadow they’d been tailing through South End was long gone. The score as it stood was two points to zero in favour of the ever-elusive J.M. AND she had broken a nail during the chaos. After a trance period spent stewing in her frustration, as soon as night fell, Circe slipped out of the office to clear her head.
Edgar hadn’t arrived yet and she felt an almost mean glee at the idea of him calling her name while warily lifting up couch cushions. Yesterday wasn’t his fault, but it always made her feel better to poke him a little, watch him squirm. Halfway down the street she did end up turning back and leaving the equivalent of a note, the tip of her broken acrylic upon the top of his desk clock, the sharp end pointing west, then she was on her way again, a dark streak of coal dust across New Haven’s already smog-laden sky.
Wind slashed across the body of her bat form as she hit top speed, pushed herself further and faster just to see if she could. Although it wasn’t raining for once, a lingering haze of moisture and fog perpetually drifted around the city limiting visibility, and it wasn’t the safest thing to take sharp corners around buildings, dive low and hit near free fall, pulling up mere moments before impacting against the cobblestone road, but as always it tugged her thoughts out of themselves. By the time she hit the western district she was as breathless as any vampire, exhilarated despite her lack of a heartbeat.
And maybe that rush of excitement was why when she spotted the dark steeple of one of the most infamous buildings in the city, she felt the roiling waves of magic coming off the structure’s wards and veered closer. Landing right at the edge of the enchantment's outer perimeter, Circe picked at the bed of her torn nail as she studied the magic. Power radiated off it like heat waves which prickled her skin all over in a feverish chill. A behemoth of a spell no doubt woven by a collection of witches and wizards, the barrier against significant threats likely doubled as a perimeter alarm, would be near impossible to dispel from the outside. She could almost imagine a little Edgar on her shoulder suggesting a nice jaunt around the downtown dance halls instead. Which wasn’t untempting. But imaginary Edgar’s worries were for the most part unfounded. Circe had no real desire to frog the enchantment (at the moment), simply to continue her walk uninterrupted. So she did.
Form already changing as she stepped forward, Circe shed her skin along with her bipedality, toeing the barrier line with one newly furred paw and baring her teeth in delight when her theory proved correct. In this form, without access to the majority of her supernatural skills and strengths, the magic did not register her as a threat. It was not quite effortless, with the weight of the spell bearing down as she moved forward, a force not unlike gravity flattening her ears to her head. By the time she reached the front gate it had grown so strong she could feel it picking curiously at her transformation, attempting to undo the stitches as if sensing something not quite right might linger just beneath her feline pelt. A healed nick reopened on her arm and the torn nail began to smart. But Circe leaned into the tide of her transformation, feeling her body melt into and become her new form. Small and lithe, she managed to squeeze through the electrified net, alit on the other side not altogether much worse off.
And there it was, the challenge conquered. The limitation thwarted. The big ugly building-sized boulder in the middle of her path spat upon. There was no reason to stay really. Apart from the lingering burn of half healed flesh, a mild annoyance which made her feel like destroying something. Or being reckless.
Which was how she ended up taking a nice stroll around SSF headquarters.
First, the garden, a scattering of boxes of green grass and bell shaped flowers between the brown of garden paving stone. The courtyard was relatively peaceful, a cutout space the bureau building enclosed on almost four sides, various outer and inner doorways opening upon the pocket of precipitation-laden trees and benches. Occasionally a person or two would cross through it from one door and enter another across the way. The third time this happened, Circe got up and followed them into the building.
There was no place to hide really in the stark white halls, but most people seemed too caught up in their own tasks to question or even notice that a cat had apparently joined the ranks of their coworkers. Occasionally someone walking past would absently try to pet her and Circe slinked out of the way with a meow which seemed to sate them. Then she turned a corner and a shadow fell across her path.
Looking up into the sparkling brown eyes of the SSF’s most powerful witch, Circe couldn’t help but wonder if she’d run into one of the spell weavers responsible for the entry trial she’d just bested. Then the young witch’s fingers wiggled in the universal gesture for wanting to squeeze a small cute animal until it popped and Circe graced her with a few paw licks, the gesture haughty and self-satisfied. So not even Abraxas’ right hand woman was a match for her power. Unsurprising considering Circe was excellent at what she did.
Shooting a glance down the left-hand corridor, the witch rubbed the palms of her hands on her pants as if rubbing off the excess cat cuteness-boosted energy thrumming through her body, started past her, spun back around, did a little half-bow like she was a shrine deer, then practically ran off.
Alright… Well perhaps there was an exit to the left. About ready to conclude her adventure for the night, Circe padded down the the hall. The hall which ended in a wide set of mahogany doors lit a strange off-violet hue by the two torches on the wall to either side. If she wasn’t imagining things the illumination of the torches shifted as she drew near and that change stretched the surrounding shadows long and alien. Slipping through the crack between the doors, Circe looked around the room and stopped just inside. For behind the desk dominating the space, a desk placed sternly in the center of the clearing formed by wall after wall of bookshelves, was the person she wanted to see least in all of North Haven.
A pen in his hand and his readers resting upon the bridge of his nose, the captain of the SSF sat there penning a missive. When he looked up, Abraxas blinked, his long lashes seemingly made of the moonlight streaming through the office window. Circe, sitting on her haunches, blinked back. Abraxas returned to his document like she wasn’t there.
Tail swishing in annoyance, Circe leapt up onto his desk where she got a better view of the neat piles of paperwork and folders which took up a good portion of the surface area. On one side, an outgoing document organizer labeled with different internal and external departments held what she presumed were the night’s efforts thus far. With his current item of interest spread out upon the center of the desk and the remaining space occupied by an inkwell ripe for an accidental flick of a cat’s tail, there was little room for company. Circe made the tough executive decision to reprioritize and laid down directly on top of his missive, her narrowed eyes slits of challenge. Daring him to move her.
To his credit, Abraxas didn’t try. Opening another folder, he took out a different file and began to work on the cat-free section of his desk, a smaller but sufficient space. When she claimed that spot as well, he finally came out of his document signing trance to stare at her for a moment. Then he picked up the desk phone and informed the party on the other line there was a cat in his office. He hung up the phone. They stared at each other some more.
After ten minutes of this, an eye contact face off which no SSF agent tasked with pest control broke by apparating into the room, something gave. The wide set of Abraxas’ shoulders slumped as he stood up and crossed to open the window. Thick curtains shifted sluggishly in the suggestion of a night breeze. A newly invited guest, the faint scent of petrichor and last morning’s rainstorm softened the air. Abraxas didn’t return to his work, merely stood looking out at the night beyond his high tower. After a while Circe joined him. Up on the window ledge she had a view of a sliver of city, the green haze of courtyard foliage.
High in the sky the moon was large and bright, beautiful. Under its white light, Circe always came away with the impression of gazing upon an old friend. Over the years so much had changed, but not the moon, brilliant and lifeless and everwhite. Perhaps it was that celestial body who from the sun borrowed its lustre and glowed on unapologetic in its coldness that had come first aeons ago. The moon, the original vampire.
For his part, Abraxas just looked pale and tired. And probably also vaguely annoyed judging by the way his fingers tightened around his arm when her tail accidentally brushed his hand. Tinged blueish from the synthetic blood which composed his diet as they were, she could still make out the pale crescents adorning his nails. Two handfuls of white lunar shavings pressed in at the bed. On some nights she wondered what it would take to break his long-trained steadiness, to impart a delicious tremble to those sure hands. On others, his name came to her mind like a poison and she cursed him vehemently for his role in supernatural law enforcement, for wasting his finely carved body as a cog of the status quo. Most nights it was both. There was no use wishing he’d be less stubborn, in a variety of ways. The undead were creatures loathe to change unless they themselves desired it.
Even having taken off his jacket and readers, Abraxas looked no less relaxed. In fact, his shirt was tight enough she could see the harness straps beneath when he bent to unlatch the second screen of the window leaving nothing between her and leaving. Under his uniform they latticed across his torso forming a binding deep to the binding of his position and stringent self-expectations. Circe wondered if he undid the straps when he rested at least. Abraxas seemed the type to sleep in his bra just in case of a fire or emergency call.
One annoying night and here she was sitting in her nemesis’ office thinking about his lingerie. Great. At least it wasn’t worse. At least she wasn’t at Elysium. The last time she’d seen Lazarus it’d been a nasty encounter involving lots of cursing at a patient in a hospital (somehow she always ended up looking like the bad guy around him) and she’d been largely avoiding him since. Never did force him to take her name off his emergency contact list though. She wondered how low exactly her information was on there, and felt the familiar mix of hurt and anger rumble up, the dregs of a dead volcano.
Perhaps she and Abraxas were both having a melancholy night, because when the pad of his finger slowly came down to stroke the fur behind one of her ears, Circe let him. She let him, but that didn’t make the curve which ghosted across his lips any more understandable. Unlikely a hallucination this time, the phenomena sent electricity prickling the air, pins and needles through the risk assessment sector of her brain. With his eyes half lidded, hair feathering about his cheekbones and neck, and the faintest curve to his mouth, Circe could finally understand Pygmalion, that sculptor she’d once considered endlessly foolish for falling in love with a statue. Whoever had once chiseled Abraxas’ features into an eternity of silver-veined alabaster had done a magnificent job. So many centuries later, even as he stroked her fur nothing apart from his finger moved. Nothing apart from his finger and the thin petals of his lips, the word, perhaps a name, silent as it entered the world.
All too late Circe remembered her premonition of danger and felt intensely itchy all over. Before she could slip out of his reach, his office, his domain, the feeling suddenly vanished. There was nothing but the stillness, a faint nighttime chorus from somewhere down below in the courtyard where crickets called to one another.
Cautiously, Circe flexed her claws, quickly realized the scratches the perimeter ward had reopened along with her damaged nail had closed up once more—no, it was more like they’d all of a sudden decided to heal despite her still-shifted form. By the time the terrible truth of what he’d done hit her, the hairs on her back had risen independently of her will. Circe bristled, her spine arching as she swiped his hand away, claws sharp and obsidian. Really, there was no one to blame but herself for letting her guard down, for thinking an SSF agent would play fair. She’d left him an opening and Abraxas had punished her for it instantly, dealing a blow by revealing a coveted facet of his bloodline power. A blow she’d be hard pressed to return apart from as a dagger in his back.
The worst part was Abraxas hadn’t even pulled his bleeding hand back. He merely looked at her with those impassive wisteria eyes she suddenly had the urge to scratch out of his face. Snarling, Circe leapt up onto the window’s outer railing and disappeared into the night.
Watching her go, Abraxas brought the scratch on his finger up to his mouth. Decided to leave the window open for a while longer. The night was lovely, and the moon, beautiful.