The Night of Blood and Music:

The music pulsed, drummed, and beat endlessly. The floor shook beneath my bare feet with the sheer power of it. It pointlessly stole away my breath, and played a tickling game with the pads of my pale toes.

My toes had been many places. Many had tasted them, played with them….stepped on them during dances. Yes, my toes had had many experiences….

As I swayed on the neon colored dance floor, I caught the eyes of many men who gazed on. I tantalized them in a way only I knew.

There are old techniques one learns over the centuries.

Their eyes were unmoving from my slender pale body, clad in a silk burgundy dress that revealed much of my flawless chest. Their eyes were starving with a need I was not a stranger to. It was a desire simpler than words or poetry. A feeling deeper and far greedier than any mortal male’s yearnings. They wanted me. All of them wanted me, and I knew it. I knew it with every whirl of my dress, every smile of my red lips, and with every twinkle of my eye.

Their dark need, their desire painted onto their faces like a painters first vague attempts at a masterpiece….this look in their eyes delighted me.

I raised my hands above my head, making my skirt rise sinfully high. I searched my audience of not only males, but females too, and let my gaze come to grace those of a man with a particular expression on his face. His black hair flowed down his back, as pure and deadly as the night. A girl danced hand in hand with him, a pink skirt hugging her little hips, and high heeled white shoes that really should have been worn by a Barbie. She was grinning like one. Her blond hair had been sprayed with a light layer of purple, and sparkles colored her cheeks silver.

I looked to her eyes, and scoffed at what I saw there.

She was protecting her man, and none to subtly either! Every time a woman would almost brush against him, she whirled him away, hanging her arms around his neck, and letting her elbows rest softly against his chest. Her eyes warned away any man who made passes at her, or those who might be friends wanting to speak to her man. Her eyes were not fit for a Barbie, they were fit for Ken.

I strutted across the floor, swaying my hips just to tease those watching, and when I felt something brush against what they’d been staring so intensely at, I whirled and pushed myself right up close to whoever had just brushed their fingers over my bottom! I looked at the man who was now staring down surprisedly at me, as I wrapped my arms about his neck as Barbie girl was doing with her own Ken. I jerked this guy’s head towards me, and just when he thought I was going to give him the kiss of his life, I let my lips drift past his face, to let them hover over his overlarge ears.

“You are not worth my time.” I breathed.

And then I whirled from him, and continued on my previous path across the flashing, multi-colored, fog filled room, to my twin targets. When I came upon them, my entrance was neither subtle, nor polite.

I whispered up behind Ken, and slipped my arms about his hips, to clasp together at just about where his belly button would be located. I pushed both my breasts and the part of my abdomen where my own belly button was, against his lower back, and felt a shiver of pleasure run from my toes, to my head at the feel of the fabric rubbing against my bare skin there.

Barbie was two heads shorter than him. I was just the right height to settle my head onto his shoulder, and whisper into his ear huskily.

“Hi.”

I’d made note of how the girl protected her man….and I’d also made clear note of how her man looked at her in return. It was a very different result. Ken didn’t look at this girl with love or possessiveness. He didn’t pull her close to him when men looked at his girl, but this was because he’d been looking at me. He’d been staring at me and my body, strong and masculine, and not the body of this….child.

I connected gazes with this child over the shoulder of my man.

The word “get” was a hiss waiting on my lips.

She stumbled back two steps from me, but it wasn’t from what I’d whispered or from my expression. It was the look in my eyes. In my eyes was everything she hadn’t expected to see, everything her mommy and daddy had warned her against. She knew I was above her here. My movements, my body and my eyes proved this to be so.

Barbie vanished into the crowd, succumbed to my superiority, and surrendered to it. The crowd grabbed her and whipped her away from my piercing eyes, and the stark obviousness to her that I had won this small battle.

I had fought much bigger.

A grin came to my lips, a lofty taunt that craved a response, craved something soft to sooth its yearning and its carnal desire. Any man would swoon at my smile, just as they would swoon at my breasts when I gave them a peek, or when I let skin brush a man’s bare chest as I did this one’s now, it would send them into a spiral that leave them swept up in a lust ridden consciousness that neither heart nor desire could foil.

The man was looking down at me, I know he was. He was searching my face, but I wasn’t yet looking at him. I was taking in his physical body.

The best part of him was his toes.

Unlike most of the other attendants of this party, this man wore no shoes. His feet were dark skinned, his toes were long, angular, and beautiful. I wanted so much to touch them, smooth my hands over them, up to the ankle, run my fingers in-between each toe….

I looked into his face, just as his eyes flicked downwards, to the part of me he apparently found the most enthralling. As he stared, I peered into his face. He had a five o’clock shadow, and black bangs that swayed in front of his green eyes. He had high cheekbones, and ears that were, for some reason, a paler shade than the rest of his skin.

I smoothed my hands across his chest, up under his shirt, exploring the muscles, the ribs, and finished with linking my hands together at the small of his back. I let my head softly hang on his shoulder. I whispered in his ear, enticingly, seductively.

This man was everything.

And what I wanted was everything.

But the music?

It still tickled my feet.

“Your mine,” was the whisper I sent into his feverishly awaiting ear. “Forget the world, my boy. Forget the girl. Tonight is….” I paused to let the perfect word come to mind, but nothing answered the summons but silence. “Tonight you are mine.”

Ken’s eyes glazed over. He wrapped his arms around my own waist, and pulled me closer. I allowed the movement, silently giving permission for this attempt at dominance…..but I would not allow this boy to think he reined supreme in this dance.

No.

In our closely knit dancing position, no one could enter our space. For all everyone else needed to know, he and I had disappeared into the world of beating music, swaying bodies, and lidded eyes.

My emotions were bubbling against the edges of my consciousness now though. How long before they began to leak?

I danced off to the side, pulling my man with me. I knew eyes watched me, wanted and lusted for me. They would not taste me though. None of them deserved that. They had no won me, and none of them would.

I had won this man.

In a dark corner made up of shadows and hushed secrets, I was finally forgotten by the rest of the room. I pushed the man against the wall. I settled into his lap, straddling him with a leg on each side of his hips.

I was a flexible woman from experience.

In this position, I was taller than he, and so therefore it was me who had to stoop my head low for my lips to claim the whole of his. And claim them I did. I tasted him, and the touch….not the man, but the lust of man….was what claimed me…..and in essence, what was made me surrender.

My lips found his cheek, his ear, which I nipped like a child playing with his mother, and then I descended to his neck. The skin was warm, heated, and when I thought of how Barbie girl might have kissed him here, I lost all proper womanly reserve.

Oh well.

I’d never had much of that anyway.

My mother hadn’t lived long enough to teach me any manners, after all.

My grin grew deeper and more pronounced, as I slid my teeth into his flesh. I let my mind slide over his face, slip inside his mouth, and claim his own mind. I stole away his human emotions and sensations. I kidnapped his sense of pain, terror, and intelligence. I would not let him fear me. I would not let him feel the pain. I would give him the greatest gift he could be given, and I would force him to accept it.

He wanted it though. He wanted it like it was “air” that I was withholding from him. He wanted me like I was a dream only created for him. And I would give him this gift. I wanted him too…but he was not like air to me. He was like a banquet needing tasting, and the King’s taste-tester was out for the day. I would delight in him, and I would surrender to the taste of his blood…the blood that signified this man’s total….careless…abandon.

Yum.

BANG!

The noise burst through my thoughts, breaking my concentration. I removed my lips from my fun, and whirled around.

My gaze focused on the double doors to the nightclub. Someone stood there, seemingly all alone. He had shoved both doors wide, which was not aloud while the club was in session. And yet, looking into his eyes, I knew this man didn’t care a thought.

There was more than one standing in the door now. 12 stood together, but the identity of the leader was easy to ascertain. He stood in front of the others. He was fair, he was Arabic, and suddenly, his eyes felt they were deserving enough to brush upon my own.

Foolish human.

I held them for a moment…but then he let his gaze fall away from my tantalizing orbs of desire and possession….and domination.

I grinned, and then gracefully removed myself from the human lap I’d been occupying. I leaned my back against the wall, crossed my arms over my chest, and kept my perfect lips grinning. I hardly gave Ken a sideways glance when he slumped against the wall, his eyes closed, his lips slack….but still appealing. I let him go. He was forgotten, and no longer deserving of my attention.

The music had stopped halted, as if the DJ had been drawn to attention by our interrupters too. This caused for my own irritation.

The music would have made this situation all the sweeter.

All the dancers and watchers of the dancers had frozen as well. It was if someone had pushed “pause” on the entire room. All eyes had been whisked away from their usual hot, gorgeous targets, to be redirected at the entrance to the room. Sensitive skin had cooled to normal temperatures, and tingling tongues had snapped back into their mouths like fruit roll-ups.

The team of 12 party-crashers were a mixture of genders, each dressed in slick black leather with silver trimming everything. They almost appeared to be a biker gang, what with their clothes and their expressions and tattoos. I knew better.

I stepped forward from the wall, so that the eyes of the newcomers would turn to me. They would know this was my party they had crashed, and it was me they would have to deal with now.

Surely enough, the eyes of the Arabic man, the apparent leader, turned towards me. He grabbed my eyes again, and it seemed the rest of the room was forgotten. Somehow, it was as if it’d been I who he’d come here for.

“Rosery,” he let my name roll of his tongue with a sweet distaste. “It’s been a long time, has it not?” He strode across the dance floor toward me a few steps, but was smarter than to get within 5 feet of me. He wasn’t that stupid. If he was, this would have been done many years ago. “Have you enjoyed playing tourist in New York? In San Francisco? In LA?” The man smirked. I didn’t care for that expression. I wanted to rip it off and feed the shreds to my lions.

“LA was my favorite.” I replied silkily. “Clubs are more fun than churches and covenants. The other places are….tasteless, but LA….” I licked my lips so intensely; it seemed I’d just been overrun with dangerous passion. “Just walking in, I could tell by the people what kind of city it was.”

“I’m sure.” Came the Arabic’s reply. “I arrived days after you. I saw what you thought of that city…..although; you seem to have changed in some way.” I cocked my head, and raised an exquisite eyebrow. “You knew I’d find you here tonight. Why did you choose a place filled with mortal civilians, and so open? If my memory serves, you like to make your kills in secret, not in front of a large audience.”

“I still do prefer to be secretive. Doing sinful things before an audience just….fails to take my breath away.” I replied softly, and laughed softly at my own humor. “Things changed tonight. The circumstances…” I licked my lips. “Were different this evening.”

“You ‘haven’t’ changed then.” He went on, and I stood up straight as he chuckled. I sensed what was hidden in that expression of amusement. I sensed a mistake…and that mistake was his thinking him superior to me. He’d made this mistake before. I’d corrected him…he probably still felt the correction I’d given him. Did he need further proof?

I would be utterly delighted to assist him in enlightenment!

I closed my eyes, a daring move, and reached my hands above my head in a stretch, then grinned at him.

I knew the human nature of males. I knew, vampire hunter or not, they could not deny my beauty. His hunter training had not made him strong enough to ignore my enticements. Indeed, his eyes were taking me in reluctantly. He drank in the curves of my hips, the color of my skin, the shape of my wrists. He strained to pull away, but could not ignore the image of my ageless toes, my ankles, my long legs coming going up beneath my dark purple skirt. He finally did glance away.

“There is no point in your attempts.” He spoke. “This is a game you and I have played before. You did not win.” He spoke to me, but I was beginning to sway from side to side, tantalizing him into watching. His body would be forced to respond to me. I was just that….delicious.

I his small insult slide, for now.

“A game is it?” I whispered warmly. “Well, then it is that I do it only to remind you of your inferiority.” I laughed. “Hunter, you will never be rid of me. Face this fact.” I threw my head back with laughter. “I’m just too good for you.”

“Well, aren’t you an overconfident bitch.” This snappy bitter tone did not come from the Arabic, but from one of the female’s standing behind him. She had purple hair halfway down her back, and her shoulders were broader than the others. Her eyes twinkled darkly, and the muscles of her neck seemed strong. She was not a lower-class. She was an upper-class hunter.

I wanted her blood.

“Aren’t you a brave one?” I asked amusedly, smiling down at this female, even though she was at least as tall as me. I surveyed her from top to bottom. “I haven’t seen you before.” I observed aloud. “Are you a new addition to this motorcycle gang of vampire hunters?”

“I’m more than just an addition.” The girl snapped, and her strength enticed me. I was hungry, and my appetite only grew with every bitter word she spoke to me.

“You’d be a gorgeous vampire.” I mused, but as soon as the words swept from my lips, the Arabic stepped in front of the purple haired girl. “Oh!” I exclaimed. “Is she yours then?” I asked, surprised, but neither replied. “Well,” I whispered. “Now I really want to make her mine.” I finally halted my dance, as my fingers lowered into visibility. “What’s your name?” Both knew I was addressing the girl, but the Arabic answered.

“Rosery, you don’t remember my name, therefore, you are undeserving of anyone else’s.”

I gave a silent curse, for he was right. His name had fled my thoughts, and would answer no summons to return. My hunger was fogging my brain. I needed to feed on something, and either one of these two idiots would do just fine.

“I may not remember your title, Mr. Arabic, but you know mine, so how about stepping forward into these strobe lights, and reminding me just as I slit that throat?”

I strutted forward, and stopped when I stood five feet from the front hunter. The team of killers tensed at my nearing them, and all hands flew to the guns at their hips.

The world had come a long way from swords.

Concern fled me. I never held onto that emotion. Worry, concern, fear were tasteless to a woman of my stature. I knew those in the room would not defend me. They would not fight for me or sacrifice themselves for me. There was no need for it.

I could hear them whispering now. I picked up their softly spoken words without effort, and knew what their energy filled words meant. The knowledge was nothing to me now. I let anything but the coming hunt and kill enter my consciousness, and anything else could just rot in hell for all I cared.

I braced my hands on both hips, my eyes on Mr. Arabic and the purple haired girl standing behind him, fury in her eyes. He would not attack me here. That was not his way. He would attempt to lure me outside to do battle there. This attempt would end in failure.

“You’re a priest.” I said to him. This was no new revelation. I’d known since he walked in the door, crashing my party. “I can smell that on you. I can smell how disgustingly holy you are.”

“Holy and pure,” confirmed the priest, nodding his head, and his name finally came to me in a sudden rush.

“Never pure, Tenor. You could never be pure. You’re a predator, like me. You could never be pure, priest or not.” I purred, and I could see a few in his group begin to back up. That made me grin to myself, that my reputation was so well known. The priest, however, smiled, as did the girl at his back.

They were beginning to piss me off.

“Let’s take this outside Rosery. There is nothing for you to win inside. They will only get in the way, right?” I laughed.

“Shut up!” Shouted the purple haired girl, and drew her gun. The room’s eyes snapped onto her in a flash. “You are a filthy vampire, nothing more! You mean as much to this world as the earth under their feet!”

“For your information,” I said, walking forward another step. “Without the earth under their feet, they’d fall to their deaths. I am the same as that earth.” I let a laugh slide up my throat and into the air.

The girl would be thrown to my lions. The man was mine.

“Tenor,” I purred as I finally came within two feet of him. I ignored the gun two feet from my head. “You’ve thought you are unable of mistakes. You say a hunter shouldn’t waste times on such things….and yet tonight, you have made a grave one.”

“And what would that be?”

A breeze whisked into the room right then, blowing my fair black hair around me. It elaborated my next words, making them echo around the room, whisking about, whispering in peoples ears. Not a person moved, nor spoke.

“You mistook that you outnumbered me,” I breathed. “When yet, we outnumber you.”

Silence, pure silence, whole and beautiful. It soaked into my skin, calming me, and exiting me. I could sense the energy building in the back of the crowd, and making its way forward.

The people Tenor had called “civilians,” starting to bare their teeth.

Tenor took a step back, shock written on his face. His right hand went for his gun, just as his purple haired fellow fired hers.

It was as if the firing of that first bullet was the person pushing “play” on the remote.

I didn’t see Tenor draw his gun, just like I hardly felt the purple haired girl’s bullet thud into my shoulder. I didn’t notice any of it, because it was right that very second the silence was shattered, like a thousand mirrors, being smashed to pieces, or a million hearts, being torn apart. It happened as vampire attacked hunter, hunter attacked vampire.

Somewhere, the DJ started the music again, and cranked it up loud enough the floor began thrumming, and even almost drowned out the fighting noises in the nightclub. The vampire hunters, who had thought themselves so powerful, so “in the right,” were now being devoured faster than they could raise a cross or fire a gun.

I strut forward with an easy lazy step, lulled by the sounds around me.

So calm, so deliciously horrid.

Blood began to spread across the floor, and I wiggled my bare toes in it.

Blood and music.

The lights began to flash above, distorting everything, making vampire bodies mix with human ones, until I couldn’t tell one from the other. I finally reached the far wall, and shoved the doors shut.

It was then that a girl hunter caught my eye. I knew who she was, and she knew who I was. She raised her gun, even though I was almost within punching range, and fired a shot into the shoulder she hadn’t already wounded. I stumbled a moment, but nothing more. Just as she’d fired a third shot, which I avoided, I went to grab her neck.

This time I gave a small cry, when a bullet was fired through the air, into my raised hand, and went out the other side, going right through the window to my left. Taking her chance, the purple haired girl leapt two feet into the air, showing off her impressive physical skill, and with a panther’s agility, leapt through the window, shattering the glass outwards. I turned my wide eyes to the right, as glass littered my hair with its jewels.

My eyes were drawn to the man collapsed in the middle of the floor. He would have been lying on the ground, were it not for the person stooping over him, holding him up by the small of his back and with a hand behind his neck. It was a vampire about to help himself.

In the time it had taken me to steal Ken from Barbie, I was at the vampire’s side, and had grabbed his collar, and hauled him to his feet. Without saying a word to him, I threw him to the side with my widely known strength. He disappeared into the thrash of bodies that lay behind me, and did not return to his prey. I leaned down to the male body lying upon the floor, barely breathing because his arms had already been bitten and scratched to such beautiful degrees. I lowered myself to eye-level. His eyes were open, lidded and tired, unseeing. I stroked his face, which was becoming very pale. He winced, as I whispered in his ear.

“See, Tenor.” I hissed. “You are not always in the right. You are not as pure as you think, and you never will be, after I am done with you.” I lowered my lips to his neck. I felt him shudder, as he felt my fake breath tickle his skin. “Don’t worry honey.” I whispered to him, “you may not be pure and holy like you thought, but in a moment…..you won’t care.” I bit, and he screamed, but the sound was lost in the chaos, so I was the only one to hear. His scream reached its pitch, then began to fall away to a dwindle, then into nothing but a weak moan.

Then, he went silent.

His body collapsed.

I drank, for his blood, strong, and filled with fear at the same time, was delectable. His body was limp, so I held up his back so he would not sag to the floor. It took only a few seconds, for me to feel a hand on my back, pulling me downwards, closer. This was shortly followed by another hand, stroking my hair.

I sighed.

Finished.

I licked my lips as I stood up, pulling him up with me. One arm took to hanging about my waist. I felt his hip press against my own, and felt the new coldness of his body through the fabrics separating us in such a terrible way.

It was his turn to whisper.

“What fun is pure and holy, when all you do is hang with the same?” His voice was tantalizing next to my ear, and I relaxed against him.

I looked around us.

The chaos had ended.

The purr had begun.

I spied vampires clutching other vampires to themselves, swaying to the music gently, whispering to each other, or just dancing silently. The music was playing softly, bodies were dancing slowly, people watched me with longing eyes. And then, I spied the boy I had left by the wall, once again dancing with Miss Barbie. Dark crimson dripped down their necks, dying their shirts red.

They may have already been vampires, but a little bloodletting didn’t need a reason did it?

The flashing red and white lights in the club made everyone look strange, and surreal, even supernatural, but what else could you expect from a club full of vampires, both new and old? Dancing, talking, laughing.

This night may not last forever, I thought to myself. But it is certain, that we will.

Then, a smile lighting up my face and my whole body with its thrum, I walked onto the dance floor again, and turned to my partner.

“Your mine,” I whispered to him, and he grinned back his submission to those words. “Forget the world outside.” I breathed to my hunter, now lover. “Tonight is….” I paused to let the perfect word come to mind, and as it did, I turned to the world around me, and with my man wrapping his arms around me from behind, so they lay possessively on my stomach, I threw my arms wide.

“Tonight is music!” I shouted.