Kate thinks she’d never meet that vampire again.
She meets her at the bar where she works (It’s a long story, though probably not that long, Ronin incident happened, she met her hero and accidentally discovered that her mother was involved with organized crime. She asked Clint to install a hidden camera to find dirt on Jack, only to end up recording her mother’s conversation with Kingpin. Long story short, she had her mother arrested by the police, so now she’s kinda broke).
Do vampires go out on dates? Kate was shocked. But anyway, Kate crosses paths with that vampire again. She orders a beer for her date and a glass of wine for herself.
“I’m sure you need something stronger than that, right?” Kate asks, mockingly.
“Ah, Kate Bishop,” says the vampire pleasantly, glancing at the sign on her chest. “Hiiii-”
“Are you stalking me now?”
The Vampire has that huge, offended look on her face. “Kate Bishop, stop being so defensive. Relax, I’m not going to hurt you, even you interrupted my feeding session. And if I wanted to kill you-”
Right. Kate blushed. “-you would’ve already. I probably wouldn’t get a chance to come back here to work,”
“No. you’d have been dead right when I pinned you,” the vampire nodded.
“Then why are you here?” Kate asked.
“I’m starving,” the vampire trailed off, “you know, I need to feed after the last time I was interrupted. After threatening a big, bad werewolf.”
Kate’s face turns red.
Those sharp vampire eyes clearly notice it, but she kindly says nothing. She continues, “Since I’m ‘chronically murdering’ humans, I thought I’d compensate humans, you know, wine and dine, something like that.”
“Alright!” Kate says, feeling embarrassed. She hurried to get the vampire order ready, then pushes them to the vampire a little bit too hard. “Your drinks, Ms… ?”
“Yelena,” the vampire offers in a good mood.
Kate tries hard not to think about going out with a vampire and offering her neck to the vampire after dinner-
“Oh. And, Kate Bishop, ” the vampire says, “do not get in my way again.”
She says that in a very gentle way, but Kate can sense the subtle threat.
And then she just leaves.
After that, Kate keeps running into Yelena. In between her “dates” with humans, Clint hears a rumor, so Kate goes undercover to investigate a coven in hopes of finding a witch who is linked to Kingpin.
Local witches usually had their own places, where they gather around during full-moon nights, Kate often runs into them. But this coven is different; Kate has never met any of these witches, and Kate sure knows all the witches in the neighborhood. She even briefly dated one of those witches.
It’s a stealthy mission, so Kate can’t actually bring her bow and arrows with her. But she can always rely on her wolf. She blends in with a group of witches and entered a hidden coven.
A witch is on stage casting spells on a dead bird. Incomprehensible spells echo through the room, amplified by the crowd below.
Kate sees the most horrible thing in her life. And she found Kingpin once. She watches that dead bird come to life. In hindsight, it may not have been a resurrection, but deark magic puppying the dead body.
The bird rises stiffly, flaps its wings a few times, then flops back to Earth like a broken puppet, never moving again.
This coven is more like a cult than a normal witch coven. Kate looks around to check if anyone was as disturbed as she is, and notices a hooded blonde creeping away from the crowd.
Kate follows them just like an impulsive werewolf.
She follows the hooded person, making sure no one is following or seeing her, then rushes forward and pounces on them, pulling their hood down.
“Yelena,” Kate hesitates, recognizing the face under the hood. Vampires have always had a strained relationship with witches, as some of witches’ spells could produce sunlight-like effects.“What’s a vampire doing in a witch coven?”
The vampire takes advantage of the werewolf’s momentary hesitation to flip their positions. “Kate Bishop, I see you’re in my way again,” Yelena says with a look of annoyance on her face, baring her fangs.
Kate is pinned to the ground by the vampire. She can’t really move, so she says, “Do you say my whole name to show that you know it?”
The vampire stares down at her.
“Yes,” said the vampire after a heartbeat, “I know a lot about you. Mother, Eleanor, recently in prison. Father, Derek, deceased. Very sad. And you’re a werewolf, but like an overzealous golden retriever puppy, which I’ll admit it’s very annoying, but you got a few points from me on that. University GPA 3.8, senior, double major, and…”
“Right, okay, we get it,” Kate interrupts in a panic, “thank you. So what are you doing here? Vampires never mess with witches.”
“Oh, of course, I came here to seduce a witch and feed on her,” the vampire laughs, but there is no joy in her eyes. “They’re using dark magic to control the dead, what do you think it is?”
“That means… they also can control vampires,” Kate realizes.
“Stay away from them, Kate Bishop. Right now, they can only make a tiny dead bird fly a minute, but it will get worse. And supernatural creatures are the most vulnerable ones. Even for you mortals,” Yelena warns her.
Then Yelena disappears in the wind again, just like she always does.
Kate stands up and looks blankly in the direction where Yelena has disappeared. “We can work together, you know!” She shouts in vain.
R. H. Felidae Athena 