Part 2: Twilight

It had never occurred before to Elisabeth White, daughter to a billionaire Oil baron and full-time socialite, just how monotonous her life had become.
She glided across the marble floor of the ballroom, moving instinctively, without thought, in the arms of the man. She couldn't even remember his name. Introduced at the beginning of the night to each other it had seemed, and had been proven right over the course of the evening, that he was as dense as all of the other "dates" her father set up for her to go to these functions with. Intelligence seemed to count for nothing, as long as the heir to the White fortune was seen with a new handsome man on her arm then appearances could be maintained.
Masking her discontent with a false smile, charming the piece of meat in whose arms she hung with a simple flick of her hair, she gazed out over the rest of the room. Large arch-shaped windows covered the wall to her left, showing a breathtaking view of the lake outside the country estate, the moon glinting off the ripple in the near perfect water; a table, lined with drinks and small finger food items for the guests, stood in front of the windows serving as a focal point for the self-important guests and their self-indulgent small talk; on each side of the room stood towering double-doors, lined with gold and embossed with images of angel's opening their arms towards the heavens; and running along the right-hand wall was an extravagantly sized imitation of Picasso's "Guernica", encased in a silver frame.
Altogether to gaudy for her tastes Elisabeth had decided, the moment her eyes had been assaulted with this dazzling display of lavishness. She shifted her weight as the man she danced with spun her around, disrupting the subtle elegance she had been maintaining with a forceful and brutish swing. She clamped down on the bitter remark she yearned to snipe at him, instead flashing him a look that radiated enjoyment. Idiot of a man she thought, as her attention was caught by one pair of double-doors in front of her opening.
Through the doors, enshrouded in the bright light from beyond that gave her an almost heavenly glow, came a woman. Dressed in a dazzling Crimson dress, she strode into the room with the utmost confidence and, Elisabeth sensed rather than saw, the knowledge that all eyes in the room were turned on her. Long black hair flowing behind her, she walked over to a small group of people beside the table and, with a smile that would have made the hearts of even the staunchest individuals flutter, began talking.
Even as the music moved from one piece to another, and she and her partner moved to join another small group of individuals, Elisabeth could not take her eyes off the woman standing across the room. She found her mouth working on automatic, making little comments here and there ("Yes, Naples is very nice at this time of year.") and laughing when it was required of her, all the while her attention focused on the woman.
So focused was she that she caught a glimpse of the woman look her way. Their eyes briefly made contact before Elisabeth swung hers away, embarrassed she had been caught staring. Yet even as she tried her hardest to focus on the inane conversation taking place in front of her ("Oh darling, I never wear a dress under a thousand dollars!") she found her eyes drawn back towards the woman, and was astonished to find her staring back. There eyes met across the room for several minutes, neither shifting their gaze an inch, until the woman smiled at her. Using small concealed hand gestures to signal Elisabeth the woman signalled her to follow, seemed to make her excuses to the group she was in, and left the room via a small door beside the windows leading to the lake.
Doing the same, Elisabeth followed her. The first thing she noticed was how terribly cold it was, the chill piercing the skin under her expensive Silk dress as if she were naked. She walked down a path lined with small trees that led to a grotto encased by a large hedge. Moonlight cascaded into the grotto, giving the woman in crimson who stood within a ghostly sheen. She looked around as Elisabeth entered the concealed place, smiled, and walked over to where she stood.
Before Elisabeth could say anything, even begin to formulate a sentence, the woman in crimson kissed her passionately on the lips. Elisabeth was too shocked and stunned by the abruptness of the gesture and simply stood there, allowing the unknown woman to kiss her in the moonlight. She felt the woman's hand run along her back, feeling its way up her spine, towards the bottom of her neck and her head.
She felt an excruciating stab of pain as something pierced her skin, embedding itself in her abdomen. She jerked away violently, but this motion only seemed to bring more pain as the object changed position inside her, grating upwards inside her. She looked down and saw the hilt of a knife extruding from her.
In pain and shock, she looked up into the face of the woman. In that face, where before she had seen only beauty, was now a look of unmasked aggression and pleasure. But it was the eyes that caused the abject terror to rise within her. The eyes of the woman shone as crimson as her dress, and within them blazed a feral insanity that Elisabeth had never seen in a human being before.
She fell to the ground, blood seeping out of her wound and saturating her dress a dark, sickly red. She felt the strength leave her body, her life flowing out of her with her blood, and her eyes began to droop. The last image Elisabeth White saw, burned into her memory for the last few seconds of her life, was the figure of the woman casually step over her, and the sound of her shoes as she strolled into the night.