At Last ((Kat&Miles

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Kat's emerald eyes darted over to her desk, and back to her fingers. Then to the desk, and back to her fingers. Her foot shook nervously, and her whole body was practically vibrating. She heaved a big sigh, and threw herself onto her feet. One hand reached out to grab her cloak, and the other reached out to grab the folded bit of parchment from the desk. The blond stuffed it into her pocket, and she marched out of the common room, throwing the cloak around her shoulders as she went. Her heels clicked against each stone step, as she practically ran up to the top of the towers. She went up there as fast as she could at human speed. Katalina figured that if she blurred up there then someone was going to say something.

Finally, after what felt like forever, she opened the door to the top of the tower. It was a pretty empty room with very little in it. Of course, that wasn't really registering in her mind. She started to pace, because she just couldn't stand still. There was practically a wear mark forming on the floor. Then she pulled out the note from her pocket to look at again.

Daughter,
Meet me at the topmost tower after dark.
Father

It was a brief note. Not even a whole sentence. Yet, it caused more turmoil in her mind than anything whole, she had ever read. Her father was dead. There was no way in hell that that old pathetic person could still be alive a hundred years later. This had to be some kind of joke. Whoever this person was, it wasn't her father. It couldn't possibly be her father. This was some other person trying to play a prank on her her or something. Then she heard a rustle behind her.

outfit

@shava444444

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There were times that Miles felt dressing up was important and this was certainly a special occasion. Only took about a hundred years to find her again, thinking she had long since offed herself like some of the others had. A crisp suit, no tie to show his relaxed nature, a bright bit of color with a nice shirt, matching flower in the buttonhole; he knew he looked good in nearly anything, but he dressed for effect. Picking up the antique box, he picked up a light basket with a strap and placed the box inside nestling two small flasks in there as well.

Strapped in place he went to the top of the building and transformed, turning into a very large owl. Hopping onto the edge, he grabbed the basket with a claw and launched himself over the edge, quickly gaining height with powerful wings. A few minutes and he passed over Hogsmeade, headed for the castle of Hogwarts and landing in a tree within good distance sight of the tower. And there he perched waiting nearly a half hour before he saw movement. He clicked a beak at her pacing and waited till she turned away to launch himself into the air, dipping deeply up the side of the castle so he arrived on the ledge with basket while she was facing away on another pace.

Knowing he would seem threatening looking with such a wing spread (his was nearly seven feet extended) he landed and then scooted forward before he transformed. Mind you, turning into a large and fairly muscled man didn't seem less threatening, but the smile of self-satisfaction at the looking her eyes was worth it. "Well met. It's been a very long time, time wasted to no purpose. It will be easier if you look at this first." Placing the basket on the floor he unstrapped the box and set it on the railing near him, but out of arm's reach for her own. Pulling a chain from around his neck he tossed it in the air to her; a small silver barrel key nestled on the end of it.

"There. That should settle the identity. I put a preservation spell on it back then..." The cloth still had a few slightly reddish stains on it, kept from turning brown by the spell which broke when the box was opened and began aging normally. As she moved he watched her form, his smile growing a tad as she was as lithe as he remembered, though she was far from where he last saw her.

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She turned around, a little too excitedly, in a blur. As she did, the hood of her cloak fell off of her golden blond hair, and she suddenly had a better viewing capacity. She had just enough time to take in an image of a ginormous owl before it transformed into an even larger man. In a second her brain was split into two different versions of what was in front of her. It was a vampire thing. She was just trying to get all the information at one time. On her preservation side, she was witnessing a bird of prey, an obvious threat in itself, shift into a large man. Well-muscled, imposing stance. Not to mention the sound of vampiric heartbeat and breathing. On her less afraid side, she noticed he was very well dressed, and not that bad looking for an old guy. Then again, she was pretty old too.

The man was clearly wasting no time with whatever it was he wanted from her. He didn't bother with introduction even though it seemed like she was the only one who didn't know what the hell was going on. He dropped some type of basket on the floor away from her, and she couldn't help but feel a little insulted. She gets a note with the words father and daughter on it, and this is what she gets instead. Seriously, what the bloody hell. In another swift movement, he rip a key from around his neck and tossed it to her. It didn't take an alchemist to figure out what he clearly wanted. He said when she did what she was going to do it would clear up the identity problem she was having. I doubt that.

Yet, she still did what she knew she probably shouldn't. She looked at the key in her hand, and then slowly, never taking her sparkling eyes off of him, walked over to the box that lay motionless next to him. Katalina was a little uncomfortably closer to the man than she would have liked, but her curiosity was getting the better of her. Never removing her emerald gaze from him, she unlocked the little box, and pulled out the bloodstained cloth inside. Against her better judgment, her eyes darted from him to the piece of cloth that she recognized painfully. Before, she could take another breath, she had a rather... painful flashback. The blond vampire felt a horrible stabbing pain in her torso, exactly where a very faint mark was. It was just maybe a degree or two whiter than the rest of her skin. Barely noticeable if you didn't know it was there. But she did. The pain was so awful that it nearly knocked her backwards onto her butt.

Her face snapped up to meet the man's, and she stood up to her full height. “Well, I thank you for that awful little reminder. However, it really doesn't explain who the bloody hell you are, OR why you have a bit of... this.” The blood was her blood. Her human blood. It was a bit of her wedding dress. She dumped that dress after she killed her fiancee. No one would still have that. It was impossible. Her hand dropped to her mark.

outfit

@shava444444

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Watching her, he saw the lithe and natural predator she had become react to him and she did well to hold her ground. She was confident enough in her own skills and abilities to not just attack but play for the time, seeking information from him which he knew she was also sensing. He remained relaxed, leaning against the half wall as she used the key, saw the reaction to the cloth. As she questioned him more he inwardly chuckled, only a bit of amusement showing in his stance. "Come now girl, it doesn't take a genius to figure this one out. It's not part of the dress technically since it's the veil. You weren't buried with it as you weren't going to wear it till the wedding. I collected that later after I stuck you in another's tomb."

Shaking his head he wondered if she had even seen the calling card he had affixed to the underside of the lid. If she had it might have made this all so much simpler a few decades back, but she must have missed it. "In the condition you were in your family was already suspicious. A few superstitious locals were keeping an eye on where they were going to bury you. I just managed to switch you out for another coffin buried a few days later. Your reputation, you might say, was intact and they never guessed where you would be hiding that way. That I kept to prove to you who was there, the only person who could have been that you never found."

He watched her eyes now waiting to see when it clicked; there really was only one answer.

"I suspect you were so confused you didn't notice the calling card I put in there on the underside of the lid. If you had, we would have met up within days, instead you went off on some harebrained adventure and I lost track of you." Mile stepped closer, his eyes watching her hungrily as if she was a treasure long sought which she was in a way. But he didn't reach out yet; she could have developed any number of reactions to meeting the one who brought her to this life over the decades and it was as apt to be angry as happy, despite the blood call in her veins to him. All Vampires could recognize the smell of their transformer of course when they "listened."

@angie1

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Kat felt a very wide range of emotions focused into one point in time. It was almost like she hit a brick wall. Only it didn't hurt so much physically. One emotion that she was feeling quite clearly was a slight annoyance. The next few words out of his mouth were a question of her intelligence, and she didn't much appreciate that. She blurred away from him by about a good five feet. Kat no longer felt comfortable being near him when she didn't have to be. He was actually being kind of rude to her, especially when she had no idea who he was. “I recognize the fact that it is my stupid veil. My question is what the bloody hell is a stalker doing with it?” Then he said something about sticking her in another tomb.

Well, she didn't know what that was about, but it didn't matter. Her brain clicked things together, and she realized that there was only one person who could say all of this, and bring her a piece of her veil. Her creator. The man she had been searching for for a very long time. Katalina imagined this moment for a very long time. Underneath a thick layer, she had a very rolling feeling. However, the high velocity impact feeling that was boiling under her surface was completely masked by the fact that she was rather annoyed. She stood back, crossed her arms over her chest, and just listened until he finished talking.

When he finished talking she couldn't tell what she wanted to do. “Right. I'm sorry, I was so caught up in the fact that I just died, and yet somehow came back to life to notice... whatever it was you left with me in my coffin.” She couldn't really get into words exactly what she was feeling, so all that came out was annoyance. It was a complex moment.

outfit

@shava444444

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Shrugging, he didn't get up or move even when she blurred a bit. He wasn't going to be aggressive in this point. "In some small way you might see me as one, but you've been missing for so long, I never got a chance to train you, show you early on what you were capable of. I regret that greatly." He looked up frowning at the ceiling. "Out of curiosity, where did you go from Spain? I had to catch a boat back to the States and could not change my plans. It p!ssed me off to no end not to have been able to locate you first."

Miles sighed, hearing her sharper edge in her voice. Shame.

"Can't change the past though I wish I could. The card would have told you where to find me. I could have given you a lot of help from the beginning. The very few Get I have had I have helped set up in their best situations." His eyes came up to her, still rather hungry in their own way. Not that he could have said why after all this time, but still. "Still, I am sure you have questions. Whether you are against me or for me, I am here to answer what I can."

He crossed his arms and waited to see what she was curious about now that she had the chance. "I took lodging nearby to be here for a week in case you wanted to see me more then once. Although it doesn't sound like you are. Such a change from that beautiful girl in the dress, nearly running right into me that night..."

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Kat stood tall. Well, as tall as she could be. It wasn't easy when you were standing in the room with someone so large. However, she didn't let that fact intimidate her, and she especially didn't let on that she even realized just how large he was in comparison to her. Then he used the word missing. Normally word choice went unnoticed, because most of the time, people didn't mean exactly what they said. However, with her, when he said the word missing. It implied that there had been someone looking for her, and that gave her a very small feeling of what she didn't feel from her parents. “Well, I was able to learn without any proper training.” Her voice softened, and didn't seem as harsh as when she used the word stalker.

He asked her where she had gone after she fled from Spain, and to that she giggled a little. It was the first ironic story of her life. “I boarded the Titanic actually, as passage to the United States. That didn't go smoothly because it sank.” Her passage to freedom hit an iceberg, and was sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Ironic. Then her eyes snapped to him. “Like I said. I did just fine without any help. It was difficult, but I was fine.” Those first few months of her being a vampire, were a total bloody mess. Literally.

Then he brought up that night. She closed her eyes, as if to close out the memory, and her head twitched to the side. Katalina had gone one hundred and nineteen years without thinking about the night she died, and she was all the happier for it. She really didn't like bringing it up. Ever. So she just pretended like he didn't say anything. “Questions. Of course, I would have questions. I.. just.. can't think of any right now.” She said her last words with indignation instead of sadness, and her head even raised a little. Sure, Kat had a million questions, but once she was asked they all flew out of her ears.

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@shava444444

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He nodded, seemingly relieved. "That's good. I felt bad when I realized I couldn't wait around till you left a trail. And then I had to return to the US, by the time I was free of my father to come back you had vanished completely." She giggled and spoke and he felt his eyes go wide. "Seriously? You were out on that? Good lord, how did you manage through that?" And then it struck him and he made a rather deep frown at the floor for a good ten seconds. "Let me get this straight. I came back to Europe to look for you at the same time you crossed the ocean to the United States." He had spent a good part of the last hundred years in Europe staying away from his homeland. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, looking as if he felt like sighing widely. "Ah well, I found others and set them up."

A shrug. "Well if you have time, keep an eye out on my last living relative who led me to you. A fifth year Ravenclaw named Rollo. If nothing else he knows me and can tell you more if you are not sure of my goals. I would see him safe if you ever find the opportunity to do so." He wondered if there was any reason for offering, but he did anyway. "I have more then enough boltholes scattered around. Let me know if there is anything you need help with, I will trade favors." She seemed touchy about her death, something he found in those changed after life only and it made him purse his lips.

A look at her and he laughed, slipping over the ledge after picking up a flask from the basket and taking a sip. Standing there on the outside ledge he shook his head at her. It amused him that suddenly she had no questions after all that time. "Well no point in me hanging around then! But I had thought a dozen decades was enough time to have passed." Stepping out on the roof tiles, he walked seemingly unconcerned to the edge and took a good leap which, with his powers was simple enough, up to the tower pinnacle, latching one arm around it while setting his feet to be able to see out. "Do as you wish then. One has only to send a note to the address in the basket and I will receive it. For a few days at least."

@angie1

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To say that this was all a little overwhelming was a definate understatement. Kat couldn't process all the feelings she was having at one time. She definitely couldn't express those feelings the way she wanted to. In fact, because she couldn't get it all out she was starting to feel a bit stuffy. Like she couldn't breath. The man had controlled the conversation thus far, and that as only because he wasn't allowing time for her to process, to ask question, to speak. Up until then, he was just speaking at her, and it was suffocating. Almost physically. He kept speaking, and all of his words were starting to blur together. You were on that? How did you survive? Others. Last living relative. Ravenclaw. Boltholes scattered around. No point in hanging around. And then he was leaving.

Katalina's cool exterior melted away, and as it traveled from her face and fell away down to her feet, she fell with it. The blond, who was trying to stay strong fell to her knees trying to catch her breath. It was basically the vampire equivalent of a panic attack brought on by stress. Through a few heavy breath, she spoke out, not even sure if he was still there anymore. “Bastardo. Que horrible excusa para una persona.” Being so overwhelmed the only hing that could come out of her mouth was Spanish. She didn't even have enough brain power to translate her thoughts to English. She tried harder and harder to, at the very least, calm herself down. “Bring me back from the dead. Fend for myself. Show up years later. Then leave.” The only thing that could come out of her mouth in English were half sentence fragments.

Finally, Kat started to feel one emotion more clearly than the other, even though she was still having difficulty breathing. Anger. She was angry.

outfit

@shava444444

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Miles could tell his arrival had messed with her head, despite the fact that was not his intention. Even more so she, like a few other created vampires, had issues with the way she died. Maybe the attack and death of her fiancée had not helped her find closure with the way she had died. Shame. In any case what she seemed to need to him was time. He had given her his address and name as well as the fact he had a living descendant at school. She had ways to find him easily enough. So once he spoke about his address and time, he turned back into an owl, ending up on the top spire with both claws,

Listening to her curse him in two languages made him hoot softly in amusement. He had been around long enough to know the Get rarely could overpower their creators, especially after so long of experience for both of them. She would feel a certain bond with him that she shared with no one else, he had answers she wanted; she was temporarily angry and if she thought back over his words she would know none of those missing years were his fault.

They were her own.

Crossing as she did she had managed to avoid his entire time in Europe and missed his roots in the Americas. And then she had only recently returned-- had she never finished her training in the Americas schools? Curious. He launched himself towards the woods, flying with an even and effortless grace, curving around the trees' tops as he went around the school once, getting a good feel for the tower where his nephew was before heading back towards the muggle village where he had taken up a temporary room.

She might not like remembering, but the image of the girl in the white wedding dress, chest pumping as she ran to the edge and then stabbed herself, falling nearly in his arms still had a rather delight to him he found hard to resist. He had been looking for a partner then, a girl to seduce and make his own, but that was not how it had come about due to the nature of time and a woman's prerogative. Still, he had had his fun at adventures with many others over time while he still looked and kept an eye out for her. The one fault he found with her so far though was a lack of a steady mind, not a person who pair attention to the clues around them, the senses of an organized mind, observant.

Too bad, if she had only kept her mind enough to find that card, then she would have seen she wasn't in her grave either.

@angie1

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Her anger had finally slowed down from the roiling boil it was to a bubbling simmer. It was just as hot, but not as crazy. It was more of a focused anger instead of being all over the place. She got to her feet as she watched him turn back into that giant bird. Katalina stood rigid, the card with the address and name crumpled in her hand. She saw the bird take flight, and her body just wouldn't let him get away. She didn't want him to get away with this. His behavior, his tact, how he handled this whole situation, it was just awful. Kat supposed that that was the reason she was so angry. How he handled the situation was what made her so angry in the first place.

But she wasn't about to let him get away. A few seconds after he took flight, Kat stood on the ledge of the window. It was a long way down, but she was a vampire. She grabbed the edges of her cloak to make a billowing cushion full of air to slow her fall just a little. Then she jumped, and everything went into slow motion. She watched the ground come up to meet her, and she positioned her feet to where when she landed, the blond rolled out of it twice. When she stopped rolling, she stood and looked up to find the bird. Once it was in her line of sight, she followed it. She followed it through the grounds, the forests, and she only stopped when it stopped. Now she knew exactly where to find him.

outfit

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Across the forest to the muggle village he flew, winding in and out of the treetops lazily and enjoying the breeze. When he got to the edge nearest the Bed and Breakfast, Miles landed in lower branches, observing for a moment before transforming, hopping down onto the earth easily. Straightening his suit, he walked across to the house, stepping around the front as if coming from the road and used the key the landlady had left him for the front door.

The story was he was setting up a friend in a new place and they had been having heavy duty work all day long unto the evenings all week as his friend was setting up a new business. Crates and other such had to be unpacked and he would be getting in late nearly every night because his friend was also covering the meals in exchange for the help. Since she would save money on him this week, her greed for extra cash easily covered any concerns she might have had and she provided him a key for the outer door.

Inside he easily locked and made the stairs quietly, not disturbing anyone in the halls as he reached his bedroom. Finding the light switch (muggles!) he turned on the lamp on the table and sat down at the window, opening it to accept a packet of letters from a messenger owl, releasing it with a few treats as he slipped his glasses on and began opening and reading his mail for the night. He did not care if she had followed him (though it was of little consequence since he had told her how to reach him by owl) and didn't bother to look out the window, knowing he could handle nearly anything that came at him...

@angie1