The beginning of winter is often sudden and bitter.

It falls like an axe now upon the city where she walks. Sit down if you dare, and watch the city pass you by. Peer through the fog at the swelling, breaking sea of human life that threatens to engulf everything with its noise and its bright lights and brighter minds.

 But pay close attention to the creature that glides past, carried on the sea.

 Be wary as you follow her with silent steps on ghostly paths; danger has many forms. It need not be fearsome and slinking as the shark in shallow waters; it can be the sleek beauty of a cobra or the soft sheen on poisoned lips.

 Danger can be bewitching, beautiful, charming. Yet it is no less treacherous.

As she turns to glance behind her, every gesture sinuously prowling as that of the tiger hunting under a blazing sun, take care to move normally, avoid her gaze and quell your pounding heart. Even a monster can be fooled.

 And she is a monster, make no mistake.

 The monster walks through the city as winter falls upon it but time's cruel hands do not touch her.

 Her winter has lasted long before the first frost came here. No depth of cold can compare to the ice that coats her heart and freezes every tear that falls from her wounded eyes, the bitter winter of the soul that makes her cold and beautiful to look upon and yet somehow fundamentally broken, like the cracked surface of an icy lake.

 While the bite in the air makes you shiver and pull your coat closer about you, hurrying through slippery streets and hanging mists, she moves slowly and fluidly, as if she has all the time in the world to watch the winter pass by.

 And she does, of course.

 She has all the time in the world.

 Silently, softly, now. Watch the monster burn her way through the maze of the crowd surrounding her. Let your heart halt as her trailing hand brushes the shoulder of a child, as her darkened gaze sweeps to see the one who blocks her path. Sigh in relief as the monster passes by and continues her journey.

 Follow her, draw a little closer, let your breath mingle with the misty air and keep your fear next to your heart, where she may not hear it.

 She keeps her head held high in the crowd, tall and bright in the mass of dark-clad humans who swarm the streets like an ant's nest. They push around her, warm and living and chattering brightly, talking on phones and striding mutely, each with their own curious purpose.

 Her gaze scans across the crowd constantly, searching through the mass of faces presented to her.

 Some feel the intensity of that hungry gold gaze and although they do not know why, feel an urge to flee from the tall woman whose flaming red hair ripples and sways as firelight tamed, her head turning back and forth, whose steps are not hindered by the crowds and who cuts like a gory blade through the crush.

 Others feel nothing and continue past, unaware of the danger that has passed them by in its designer clothes and clicking boots.

 Keep your distance; the monster's teeth are long and sharp. But step from the crowds, take your rest beneath the canopy of a café and breathe in sharply as you see the monster has halted in the crowd.

 The rapacious, icy gaze has settled on a young man.

 She can see only his profile, but you realise almost at once that he has a beauty to match her own with shadow-dark hair and eyes that are innocent with the green of the spring to come, lips curved in a wistful smile as he looks into the distance.

 The stare of the monster swings without warning and without compassion to meet your eyes.

 You shrink back; the teeth of the monster are bright and white against the perfect, berry-stained red of her full mouth. They show in a smile that holds little humour, only a depravity that you cannot comprehend.

 "Keep away," she says silently and you obey. You melt into the crowd, letting the tide take you away from her and her cold, careless gaze even as you understand what it is you have done.

 You have left that boy to die.

 Behind you, you hear the monster laugh.

 Liam Ramirez heard that laugh haunting his dreams.

~*~

 Between dreams and waking. Between memory and emotion. Caught in a dozen tableaus, frozen in rich colours that would never lose their hue.

 Suzanne.

 That was how they knew her. Only one clean, cutting word that brought to mind a wealth of images. Oh God. Suzanne.

 Suzanne, with her red, red hair that fell in wisps across her forehead, leaning over paper. Those unnaturally thin, almost bony hands holding a pencil and sweeping graceful marks onto the paper until an image formed from the mass, caught with her accurate economy of line and sparing touches of colour.

 Suzanne, with that glorious bloodfall of hair streaming back in the wind as she ran, fleet and slender, hunting down the shadows themselves, her eyes radiating sinister yellow lights, the predatory, angular face drawn in concentration. Not halting as a silver blade gleamed in her hand and left it with vicious precision, pinwheeling manically until it thudded into the back of the shapeshifter who waited on the corner for a taxi.

 Suzanne, her face limned with sorrow, staring at a headstone while a single tear swept down her cheek to glaze the velveteen blood roses laid on the ground. Gliding away, step by silent step and falling like a pale wraith into the darkness of a world that held only death and desire.

 Suzanne, her bloodstained lips drawn back in a grin to reveal pearly fangs before confused recognition filled her eyes and she was no longer that ghastly woman, but a lonely, confused creature whose honey-golden gaze was filled with dreams and whose burning, tumbling hair made her a being from myth.

 Suzanne, who had haunted Liam Ramirez for fifteen years, who was resurrected in his memory, who became more lovely and more terrible with each passing day.

 Suzanne, exotic as the phoenix, burning herself up as she soared ever higher, rising again from the ashes to sear the skies of his mind again and again. Suzanne, to whom he had made a promise fifteen long, bitter years ago.

 Years that passed with winters ever colder, the darkness ever nearer and the promise ever more important.

 The time had come to keep his vow.