Sirens wail in the distance, growing louder and then quieter as the car speeds through the metal jungle. Karou's head tilts slightly towards the noise. Her eyes, dark as the star-strewn sky, peer out from beneath her wave of dark, dark hair. The night shadow bathes it almost to black, but for the orange glow of the streetlamps that set it to burn like embers upon coal.
The bright red and blue of fleeing lights reflect upon dark of her eyes. She tracks the police car from her crouch upon the shipping container and only returns her gaze to her quarry when the lights are gone and the sirens are faded.
Slowly, silently, tiger-sly and gazelle-light, Karou creeps forward upon the container. The tinkle of laughter, young and naïve, pierces her heart and the hunter breathes â€" in, out, slowly, slowly â€" she would end this now, tonight. Footsteps hurry, the click of heels chiming with the heavy fall of trainers. Tangled together, the creature and his lover tumble into the open.
The shadows cast from the lofty towers of contains swallow Karou's small frame and into them she sinks. Her light begs to play across her skin, hungry to pulse out, to dash the darkness and bathe the vampire in white, white light. The gazelle-girl coos to her power softly, her fingers clenched as if upon reins; her power is a flighty, wayward beast. Karou placates it gently, setting it to drink all light about her, to plunge her more and more into the welcoming black.
Oh she is a shadow he will not see coming. She will be his arrow in the dark.
Her preparing breath steams out across the cold metal beneath her. As nimble as a cat, Karou is suddenly standing, her bow released and an arrow lying upon her fingers, drawn and ready. With little more than a whisper, the arrow is loosed, finding its target with an ominously soft, wet thunk.
Slowly, her bow lowers, dark eyes watching, grimly, as the creature falls. Tentatively Karou waits â€" oh how she waits! - with her stomach fluttering, hoping to feel anything from her soul but that vacant, gaping numbness. It has become her unwelcome bed fellow - a faceless partner that is so slowly swallowing her as readily as a black hole would a sun.
Alas, there is but nothing.
Her lips tighten, the dread of her impassivity tearing at her heart. Karou's breath when it comes now is fluttery and light, filled with sadness and remorse â€" not for the vampire, even as she lets her power pour out, light flooding upon him and his girl until, with a terrible cry he passes into the ether as little more than dust and ash. No, her sadness, her remorse is for herself. Her heart is a wound she cannot fix and until her soul feels the pain of death again Karou is doomed to bleed and bleed.
Away from the girl's cries, the hunter turns, her strides still silent and gazelle-light. Upon the ground, she is but a stride away from the crate, when a shadow looms. Light rushes forward, hungry, keen, desperate to bathe her adversary in righteous sunlight but back, back, Karou pushes it, slipping further into shadow until she is upon the figure. Her knife lies snug across their throat, her chest to their back as the black of her hair caresses their cheek. "Do not follow me. It is polite to ask." She murmurs, each breath as hot as coals across their skin.