We don't always walk into danger with our eyes closed.
Sometimes, we enter with full lashes and painted lips,
Waiting not to escape the fire
But to feel it wrap around our bones.
š©øš¹š©ø
Amalia Dervaux stood at the edge of the entrance, her heels pausing on the smooth black marble floor, eyes trailing up the glowing sign above. There's no subtitle, no explanations. Just the name: clean, red, and pulsing like something alive.
It wasn't her scene. Not really. But then again, nothing had felt like her scene lately.
Her fingers brushed the side of her dress, smoothing invisible creases from the tight, obsidian fabric. A little black thing with sleeves that hugged her arms and a neckline that dipped just enough to feel brave. She wasn't dressed to seduce, not consciously, but there was a quiet hunger in her tonight. Not for someone but for something: a shift, a sensation, a step outside the suffocating predictability of her life.
A girl could only powder so many faces and contour so many cheekbones before needing to feel her own skin again.
The bouncer didn't ask her name. He simply looked, held her gaze for a second longer than most would dare, and then tilted his head. The door opened without a sound.
Warmth hit her first. It wasn't heat but that low, perfumed breath of velvet air. The scent was expensive, dark: amber, myrrh, something faintly metallic underneath.
Music throbbed behind the walls, too low to be dancing, too heavy to ignore. The lighting was dim, sensual and curated. Every surface gleamed like oil poured over shadow.
Inside, it didn't look like a nightclub. It looked like a secret. She stepped in. The place was filled with them: the vampires.
They weren't huddled in corners like forgotten folklore. They sprawled across leather couches, lounging with their wine-dark drinks, their hands moving lazily across thighs, necks, skin.
They were beautiful. Of course they were. But it wasn't just beauty. It was the kind of presence that rewired a room. People moved differently around them: slower, more careful, as if afraid of making the wrong sound.
And humans were here too. Some gazed with reverence. Others, with the fragile thrill of prey dancing close to the teeth. Amalia didn't know which one she was yet.
She made her way to the bar, perching on a stool that curved beneath her hips like it had been waiting for her. The bartender, a human, she guessed by the warmth in his cheeks poured her a drink without asking. It was something red but it wasn't wine.
š¹ "What is this?"
She asked softly, her fingers curled around the crystal glass.
The bartender didn't answer. He just smiled and walked away.
She brought it to her lips. Whatever it was, it tasted like cherries soaked in secrets.
She glanced around, her eyes adjusting to the rhythm of the place. The music had no lyrics, just dark pulses and breathy notes, as if the club itself was exhaling.
She caught glimpses of them, the vampires, as they passed. They were tall, cold elegance wrapped in silk and suits. Their skin was pale in a way that caught light without reflecting it. Hair too perfect. Eyes that seemed to forget to blink. Some smiled. Others watched. She was being observed. Like a new scent introduced into a long-forgotten room.
Her skin felt too tight. Her thoughts, too loose. It didn't feel like danger. It felt like falling.
She lifted her glass again, lips brushing the rim and that was when she saw her.
Amalia's eyes tilted upward, drawn not by sound but by something more magnetic, more primal. At the top of the velvet staircase, partially veiled by shadows and crimson light, stood a woman.
A vision.
She was wearing a long black dress, fitted to her body like it had been sewn on by a sinner. Her blonde hair was swept up, not a strand out of place, exposing the graceful lines of her neck, the kind of neck one would want to worship or sink their teeth into. Her skin was alabaster, not pale in the fragile human way, but cold and eternal, untouched by time. Her blue eyes, glacial, bottomless, landed on Amalia like a quiet possession.
For a second, they stared at each other.
And in that suspended instant, Amalia knew this wasn't a woman. This was one of them. One of the night creatures. She could see it in her stillness, in the haunting perfection of her face. Not even the most advanced surgeons in Beverly Hills, not the most sacred Korean skincare rituals, could sculpt a beauty like that. It was inhuman. It was divine. It was terrifying.
The woman moved.
She descended the stairs like dusk descending on a ruined church: elegant, inevitable, sacred. Her red heels clicked faintly against the floor, but the sound was too soft to be real, more like a memory of sound. Each step was a whisper. The kind that makes you lean forward, forgetting everything else.
She didn't scan the room.
Her gaze stayed locked on Amalia.
And Amalia...she couldn't look away. Her throat tightened. She felt her own pulse between her thighs, a throb of heat blooming in places she hadn't expected. Her fingers clenched around her glass. The world faded behind the woman's slow, hypnotic approach.
She was tall and thin. Her hips swayed as if the very air parted for her. There was poise in her bones. Red lipstick painted her lips in a shape too cruel to be angelic, and yet nothing about her said demon either. She was something older than either myth.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, and for a moment, simply stood there, watching Amalia, claiming her with a look.
The human's lips went dry as the unknown woman began to walk again, her path a straight line, not rushed, not hesitant. The way her dress flowed behind her: silent silk dragging secrets, made Amalia feel underdressed and overexposed all at once.
This wasn't seduction. It was worship demanded.
The vampire reached the bar, just a few steps away. Her scent preceded her: dark roses soaked in blood, laced with something ancient and wild. The kind of scent that would linger in a lover's bed for days, weeks. Forever.
She turned her head and smiled.
š©ø "You're watching me like you're afraid you'll wake up"
She murmured, her voice low, smooth, touched with the heat of something more primal than flirtation.
Amalia blinked.
š¹ "Maybe I am."
š©ø "And yet, here you are. Wide awake. Wanting."
The vampire leaned against the bar, not sitting, not relaxing, just existing, in that haunting, motionless way that made every inch of her seem forbidden. She didn't reach out. She didn't need to.
The air between them already felt like it had hands.
š¹ "You don't even know what I want."
Amalia said, trying to steady her voice.
š©ø "You wouldn't be here if you didn't want something wild...Or someone."
Amalia's breath caught in her chest.
It wasn't just attraction. It wasn't flirtation. It was pressure. Lust with teeth. Gravity with hunger.
š¹ "Who are you?" she whispered.
š©ø "Someone you'll dream about even if you run."
Amalia didn't move. Because part of her already knew she wasn't going to run.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
š¹ means Amalia
š©ø means the vampire