3"I'm an assassin. I don't do snowball fights."
"Are you sure?" Before she could answer, a tightly packed ball of ice flakes smacked into her cheek.
A/N: Darker than my usual stuff. Branching out into a new fandom. Review please?
The girl stared at the dead body. Only minutes ago, he'd been alive, with friends, a pet, a home... Now he had nothing but a slit throat and a silver watch stuck at midnight. Thanira felt no remorse.
Once, long ago, her name had been Emily. But that was ten years in the past, and the 18-year old standing in the shadowed room was no child with semi-macabray interests, but an assassin on no one's side but her own. She adjusted the sleeves of her grey jumpsuit under her dark blue-black satin gloves and checked to make sure her raven locks covered her neck. No need to expose pale skin at night when on a stealth mission. She looked at the corpse, mesmerised, until a voice interrupted her from her reverie.
"Hey Em."
She reacted instantly. Half-crouching to reach her pitch black leather boots, and thereby take out the glitteringly sharp knives hidden in the strap, she twisted. Her clean blade, the one she hadn't used to kill the man, was at the newcomer's throat before the vibrations faded from his vocal cords. Briefly, she wondered why she hadn't heard anything. That question was answered as she took in his face.
Paler than her own, with snow-white hair, his light blue eyes glinted in the faint moonlight coming through the window. Below the neck, which was also pale, was a blue hoodie covered in frosty patterns. As he raised his hands in defeat, an old-fashioned shephard's crook clattered to the ground.
"Oh, it's you." Her voice betrayed no emotion.
"Yep. Long time no see, Emily."
"Don't call me Emily. I took great care to make sure no one knows my birth name. I worked hard to get my name changed to Thanira."
"Thanira, huh? So much has changed in ten years. For Thanatos, I presume?"
"You know me so well... for an immortal who I haven't seen for a decade, Jack." Checking her surroundings, she lowered the knife and slid it back under her strap. The boy, Jack, let his arms fall and slowly bent down to pick up his staff.
"I had to... figure some things out. But," he spread his arms, "now I'm here. What's happening?"
"Oh, the usual." Sarcasm threaded through the words. "Deaths, marriages, births, wars, sickness, and of course, an assassin." He nodded.
"Yes, I heard about that. Attacks at midnight, presumably, the victims always have slit throats and wrists as well as silver watches that are always stuck at midnight. You?"
"Who do you think killed that guy?" She pointed at the man lying a few feet away. They stood in silence for a moment. "And you reminded me..." She knelt by the man's left arm and took up her ebony bag. The zipper echoed loudly in the empty building. From the shadows inside she took a transparent rubber tube and a plastic bottle. Unsheathing her knife again, she lifted the sleeve and sliced the vein crosswise. Quickly, before the blood could ooze out too far, she attached the tube and stretched the other end over the lip of the bottle. Sitting back on her heels, she watched the scarlet liquid stickily make its way through the rubber and drip... drip... drip... into the bottle.
"So, what, you're a vampire now too?" Jack asked. She spared a glance at the boy. He was leaning on the crooked end of his staff, watching her.
"Let's put it this way: If Jack Frost is real, what isn't?" she replied cryptically. "If I ever run into one, depending on its mood either this is for me to drink, or it's a distraction. Be prepared, right?" He nodded.
"But you aren't one yet."
"No." She monitored the level of blood in the bottle, making sure it didn't overflow into the tube.
"Do you do this often?"
"What? Kill people? Take away their lives, spirits, thoughts? Not really."
"No, the blood. Although that too, I suppose."
"Well, I take blood every time I kill. One bottle each body. Four bottles so far." She sealed the cut with a salve and corked the bottle. "Five, now. Once a week. People are getting scared, Jack. I'm in the newspapers. The Midnight Assassin, they're calling me. It's very... fun, for lack of a better word. Exhilarating." She gave a dry laugh. "I sound crazy. But it's true." Thanira stood to go.
"What? Leaving already?" Jack looked up.
"It's 1:00, Jack. I'm the Midnight assassin, remember? Goodbye. See you next decade, whether that be in jail or grave or another room like this." She opened the window, turned to face him. "Innocents first."
"Fine. Bye, Em- Thanira. Good luck with your deals with death." He jumped out the window, his companion catching him in her breezes. Wind swept him up into the night sky, and as he turned around he saw a patch of shadow, barely discernable, fall from the window- no, climbing from the window, so fast it looked like gravity- and disappear into a dark alley. "See you, Emily," he whispered.
A/N: So, yeah. Dark. Different style of writing, too. This took place... somewhere around WWII? Maybe? Review please, even if it's just "GG" or "That's gross." Let me know what you think! Next is the interlude, and then they meet again. This is sort of a backstory to one of my upcoming fics. Press that li'l button down there that says "Review"! Come on... you know you want to... JUST DO IT! DON'T LET YOUR DREAMS BE DREAMS!
Thanira: No... let them be nightmares.
Pitch: IKR? High five!
SomeoneKnew: Pitch... have you been using my computer again? He keeps stealing it and going on Twitter and stuff.
Pitch: Just review or I'll give you nightmares.
Thanira: Guys? This is a long authors' note. We should probably wrap it up. And FYI Pitch, I haven't had a dream or nightmare since I was 10, so your threats don't work on me. Bye guys! Go and live your lives while you can.
SomeoneKnew: Is that a threat?
Thanira: No, I'm just saying that we're all gonna die someday-
Jack: BUT NOT ME! Because I'm immortal!
SomeoneKnew: No, because you're already dead. Reviewers get chocolate frogs! Or if you're not a Potterhead you get Cockroach Clusters. JK, you get candy corn. With Halloween coming up, I'll be in this kind of morbid mood all month. So, see you! Potterhead out.