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February 19th 2009
02:39 LT
Parkhotel Horst, Horst aan de Maas, Limburg, The Netherlands
"You know what day it is?" she asked quietly, her voice carrying a sharpness that made even the air around them seem to tense. Gauthier's eyes flickered, the smallest hint of recognition before his smirk returned. "It's my sister's birthday," she continued, her voice still icy, but now holding the weight of a decade of grief. "She would've been thirty-two. Remember her?"
He tilted his head, eyes gleaming like something unclean. "What about Céline?" he asked. She flinched, barely, her breath caught in her throat, brittle as glass. "How old would she be now?" he said, and his voice was quieter this time — almost tender, wrapped in venom.
She moved before her mind caught up. The shot rang out like a scream in a cathedral. One clean crack, and Gauthier folded inward, both hands pressed to the crimson spill blooming across his shirt. Blood leaked through his fingers, warm and fast, painting the ground beneath him.
He screamed, high and raw, though she barely heard it.
Because he was changing.
Right there, in the pool of blood, Gauthier's body wavered, blurred at the edges. His shape melted into something smaller, frailer.
Céline.
Céline was lying there now, her face twisted in pain, her eyes wide with disbelief. Her voice was small, broken by a thousand invisible fractures. "Why did you do this to me?"
Eleanor stumbled back, breath gone, heart thrashing like it wanted out of her chest. Then — darkness.
She jerked awake, the real world rushing in like floodwater. Her hotel room. The bed. The cold sweat soaking her shirt. The sheets tangled around her legs like vines. She gasped, sitting upright, hands trembling in her lap, yet her pulse kept racing. And somewhere in the back of her throat, that scream still echoed.
February 21tst 2009
Washington D.C.
The airport was awash in steel and sterile light, the kind that flattened every face and made time feel suspended. Eleanor stood near the baggage claim, still and drawn inward like a figure in a painting no one noticed. The world moved around her in jostling clusters — families reuniting, lovers kissing hello, children tugging at sleeves. She couldn't quite hear them, not really. Her heart beat loud in her ears, drowning out the sounds with a low, constant thrum.
