Chapter Three

"That's why I hate a bear...you look right in their face and they got no remorse."

The Yearling was playing in her head as she watched them pull a swollen body from the river. There were few times where she felt like she could blend in with people. No Man's Land, Oklahoma 1936. Berlin, Germany 1918. Galveston, Texas 1900. But there were two constant places where she felt people didn't stare at her, didn't ask her questions, didn't cross their arms or suddenly put their jackets back on when she entered a room; one was a movie theater and the other a crime scene.

The police had gathered. The photographer was busy. The ambulance stood idle. She had joined the onlookers. The eager, the curious, the horrified; they were all there. Consumed by the spectacle, these crowds attributed the coldness they suddenly felt to the scene before them.

Ste stood watching him. The scenes from the Yearling seemed to brighten in her mind as she starred at him; flickers of the log cabin, bursts of Gregory Peck, flashes of the quick black eyes of a grown deer, it's throat quivering and expanding and retracting.

He had not noticed her yet. She wanted to escape, but knew it was too late. It was too late when she walked over, his laughter, so familiar, drew her close. He was speaking with a police officer, a man he apparently knew, when he stopped giving orders and turned his head suddenly. He caught her in his sight. And again he laughed.

She shuddered and started to back away. The newspapermen were circling the scene, someone had shouted something and now the audience seemed to swell, swell like that body but unlike that body it grew louder and louder. What had been said? The identity of the body? She had missed the name and the words being spoken now rushed by her quickly. The crowd was a swarm of crying and shocked people. She wanted to run. She did not want to hear that laughter ever again. She pushed her way through commuters clasping their briefcases, waiters clenching their aprons, shoppers choking their bags.

She wished she had never left the movie theater. It was like seeing the sunrise. Siting there, surrounded by darkness and then, a beam of light! Something appears ahead, the room is illuminated and she becomes lost and forgetful. The theater had become a kind of refuge; a refuge from people, a refuge from herself.

As she reached the edge of the crowd, the name of the victim was repeated. This time she heard it. She stopped clawing her way out. Her face now matched the humans beside her. She was shocked.

"Are you really that surprised?"

She turned around slowly. The vampire was standing behind her. His pea coat was open, his hat in his arms. He first looked amused but then, truly seeing the condition she was in, his face fell. Her satchel grew heavy. The noise of the crowd seemed to echo and echo in her ears and skull. He said something, this creature-but now everything was silent and she was falling. She was falling away from this cloudy broken London, from this murder scene, from him. Bishop caught Elizabeth in his arms just as they lifted the body into the ambulance.