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Vivienne Hampton had changed. She'd taken back her old name, because he liked it. She'd lost most of her money, because she couldn't do her job anymore. She'd stopped buying pretty dresses because she didn't have anywhere to wear them. She'd stopped wearing nice underwear because the man she hoped would appreciate it just didn't. She had become slack, her body no longer in fighting shape, no longer lithe and quick.
She'd chosen to change. She didn't regret the choice, but to say she didn't miss her old life would be a lie. She wasn't unhappy, not anymore. She was loved, she knew that much. She was, in many ways, happier than she'd ever been.
And, in many ways, unhappier.
She wasn't sure when the dreams had started. She'd always had dreams; vivid ones, filled with snow, filled with the sea, filled with tigers. Those were the dreams which jolted her awake. But the other dreams, she had begun to look forward to.
Blood, so much of it. And the report of gunshots bouncing off the walls of empty warehouses. She took lives, so many lives, and she relished every ounce of pain she caused. These weren't memory-dreams; they were new. She wore expensive clothes, carried her gun. Knives, sometimes. Never poisons, because they were too remote. She was who she had been, but even better.
She dreamt she was the shadow in the corner of the Great Detective's eye; the whispers of frightened voices in the streets; the echoing tapping of heels, walking away. The silhouette turning the corner, always too quick, always too good.
Oh, how she relished them. The weight of her gun, an extension of her hand; the clinking of an empty shell. The playfulness - that was what she had missed most of all. Murder was all about seduction: flirting, caressing, being gentle right up until the point of cruelty. She was good at surprises.
Vivienne smiled in her sleep as Vin took another victim.
"The Tigress." A hushed name, afraid to awaken the large cat, afraid of her claws, afraid of her stripes. The smoking gun, the last few seconds of shock until the brain dies, until the lights go out. The soft thud of a body falling backwards, exquisitely-tailored suits blood-sodden.
Vivienne smiled in her sleep as Vin pressed her hands into the pooling, warm redness, viscous and thick and dark, a life force. Look. There's a spot. The red moon hung heavily over London. A blazing in the skies, red sky at night. Vivienne sighed in her sleep as Vin disappeared.
On Sunday mornings, with her hands still soaked in guilt, Vivienne mixed eggs and flour, water and sugar. Red velvet. She made food out of her rituals and fed it to her lover, who would never know the thoughts he was eating.
"Not tonight, Vivienne," he turned away and so did she, closing her eyes to another frenzy.