The Moonlight Dripping Red

"Some wounds aren't carved by claws, but by glances held too long."

🩸🌹🩸

The third time Amalia returned to the club, the sky was almost too quiet. As if the night itself had taken a breath, waiting to see if she would follow through.

The club looked the same: dim lights rippled across velvet and glass, casting shadows that touched too much skin. Bass throbbed beneath her ribs like a second heartbeat. The air was perfumed with alcohol, heat, and something else: the metallic sweetness that always lingered near the vampires.

She moved through it all like smoke. Confident on the outside, fractured beneath it. Her dress hugged her frame in black silk, and her lips were painted the color of bitten cherries. Every step echoed with the lie she was trying to sell herself: "I don't care. I just want to enjoy the night."

But she saw Liliana.

She was seated on a velvet chaise in the far corner, positioned like art, deliberately framed by shadows and candlelight. A woman was sitting on her lap. It was a human. She was laughing with the ease of someone already lost.

The vampire's hands rested on the girl's thighs, fingers tracing delicate, lazy circles. Her long legs were crossed beneath the slit of her dress, revealing porcelain skin and red heels that caught the light like a sin confessed. Her hair was pinned up with elegance and her lips her was pressed to the woman's throat in a kiss that was far too intimate to be innocent.

Amalia stopped walking. It felt like the air left the room. She couldn't look away, even when every part of her told her to turn around, to leave before it got worse.

And it did. Liliana's eyes found her. Effortlessly. As if she'd sensed her from across the room the moment she stepped inside. But she didn't stop kissing the girl. She didn't let go. Instead, she pulled the human tighter, her pale fingers curling around the woman's waist like a cage draped in silk.

Then, without breaking eye contact, Liliana leaned in and ran her tongue slowly, deliberately, along the shell of the woman's ear.

Amalia blinked. Her mouth dried. Her spine locked. Rage bloomed beneath her ribs like a bruise. She felt it flush across her chest, tighten her throat, coil in her gut. She had no right to feel this way, she knew that. Liliana had never made promises. Never asked her to stay. But still, watching her caress another woman while staring straight at her felt like being laughed at. It felt like being punished for caring.

She turned on her heel and walked out, heels echoing louder than the music behind her.

The cool night air hit her hard, but it didn't clear her head.

She stepped onto the curb, willing herself not to look back. Her hands shook slightly as she fumbled with her phone, pretending to text someone, pretending to have somewhere to be. Anything to make her feel less like a fool.

But then, a figure stepped out of the shadows. It was Liliana.

She stood beneath a flickering streetlight, her arms crossed loosely over her chest, her expression carved from ice and amusement.

🩸 "Leaving so soon?"

She asked, her voice soaked in velvet and something meaner.

🩸"I thought you liked the show."

Amalia's throat tightened. She took a deep breath and replied coldly:

🌹"You really are cruel."

The night creature tilted her head, her lips curling into a smirk.

🩸"Cruel? I gave you a front-row seat. I thought you'd appreciate the effort."

Amalia crossed her arms. Her voice was brittle, sharp with the heat she'd tried to swallow.

🌹"I didn't come here to watch you grope some stranger."

🩸"No?"

Liliana arched an elegant brow.

🩸"Then what did you come for? A kiss? A fuck? A confession of undying love?"

She stepped closer, her heels soundless on the concrete.

🩸"Because you looked like a woman searching for something. Eyes sweeping the room like a lover waiting to be claimed."

Amalia narrowed her eyes.

🌹"Don't flatter yourself."

The vampire's grin widened, wicked and knowing.

🩸"Oh, darling. I don't need to. You walked in there for me, didn't you? And when you saw me with someone else, it burned. Don't lie. Jealousy looks good on you."

🌹 "I'm not jealous." she stiffened.

The blonde vampire took another step forward, invading the female human's space with the ease of someone who belonged wherever she stood.

🩸 "Good. Because there's nothing between us. I'm not yours. And you're not mine."

Her voice dropped, lower and darker.

🩸"I can fuck whoever I want. And I do. Often. Easily. I don't chase anyone...least of all a human who thinks playing hard to get will make her less predictable."

Amalia's chest rose and fell rapidly. She wanted to hit the vampire. She wanted to kiss her. She wanted to run until her body gave out, anything to stop the sick, hot twist in her stomach.

🌹 "You know what?"

Amalia she said, her voice trembling despite her effort.

🌹"You're not irresistible. You're just a manipulative, arrogant and cold bitch."

The vampire smiled. She wasn'y offended. Just pleased.

🩸 "And still, here you are."

The silence between them stretched, full of jagged things unsaid.

Then, just as Amalia opened her mouth to speak again, Liliana vanished, nothing more than a whisper of air, a flicker in the dark.

And the female human was left alone, standing under a broken streetlight with nothing but the echo of her own heartbeat and the bitter knowledge that she would still come back.

🌹🩸🌕🌑🌔🌹🩸

The city was quiet when Amalia stepped out of the car. As if the concrete, the flickering lamps, the air itself had witnessed something it wasn't meant to see and now chose silence instead of remembering.

The wind brushed her arms, sharp and intimate. It didn't bite like cold, it clung, like breath caught between teeth.

Her heels clicked along the pavement, but the sound felt too loud, too alive. Her shadow, stretched long beneath the amber streetlight, looked more confident than she felt.

The key trembled in her grip as she unlocked the door. Not from fear. Not from cold. But from her: Liliana. Or whatever version of her had chosen to drape another human across her lap tonight and run her tongue along that girl's ear while looking directly at Amalia, like a queen to a pawn.

Inside, the apartment was offensive in its brightness. It was too sterile, too awake. The lights buzzed. The air was clean. Everything untouched, unbothered as if the night hadn't just torn something open inside her.

She kicked off her heels without grace. Her sigh was not just exhaustion, it was betrayal. By her own nerves, by her fantasies, by whatever fragile illusion she'd been carrying that maybe she was different. Special.

The hallway mirror caught her in passing, and the sight stopped her: lips too red, eyes too wide, skin flushed like she'd run a mile with her shame.

She looked like a woman who'd just had sex.

But she hadn't even been touched. She was just seen. Just pierced by a stare that had pulled her insides taut and made her heart beat in places it shouldn't.

Her dress slipped from her shoulders and puddled on the floor like a secret she no longer had the strength to hide. She stepped over it, naked and raw. She walked to the bathroom without turning on the overhead light.

The vanity bulbs were cruel. They exposed everything: the tension in her collarbones, the line between her brows, the breath still trapped in her chest.

She turned the shower to scalding and stepped under it like someone taking penance.

The water hit her like heat from judgment. She scrubbed hard. Not to clean but to erase. To peel away the image of that smug smirk across crimson lips as Liliana wrapped her arms around someone else. To melt the phantom pressure of that voice against her throat whispering: "Jealousy looks good on you."

But nothing washed away. Not the scent of smoke and roses. Not the sound of that laugh. Not the taste of something she had never kissed but somehow already craved.

She leaned her head against the wall and let the heat pour over her. Her eyes closed. Her fists clenched.

"There's nothing between us. I fuck who I want. I don't chase humans."

The words hit harder now than they had outside the club. Out there, she'd still been angry. Out there, she'd still pretended not to care.

But here, alone with nothing but steam and memory, she couldn't lie anymore.

She turned off the water, wrapped herself in a towel, and looked in the mirror again. Her hair curled at the ends, heavy with water. Her mouth looked kissed. Her eyes looked ruined.

She didn't recognize the woman looking back. She looked like prey still hoping the wolf would return.

With a hiss, she stormed into her bedroom.

The drawers opened with violence. She wanted pajamas, anything soft, plain, unremarkable. Something that said: "I am normal. I am not undone."

But her fingers brushed lace. It was black, delicate... and useless.

She slammed the drawer shut.

The bed was too cold. Her body too loud. The silence too deep.

She lay still for five minutes, maybe ten, before her legs twitched and her thighs pulsed with something she couldn't name.

She slid a hand between them. Not to feel good. But to prove something. To prove that she was still in control. That her body was still hers. That Liliana hadn't stolen anything from her but air.

But her fingers hesitated.

Her touch felt borrowed. Her breath shallow. She couldn't conjure heat from herself. All she could summon were the red-lipped visions of someone else, the image of a vampire licking another woman's ear, not breaking eye contact, not even pretending Amalia didn't exist.

She groaned, frustrated, and turned on her side.

She didn't want the vampire. She hated her.

She hated her arrogance, her cruelty, her games.

She hated that Liliana had seen her across the room and chosen to mock her with that display: licking someone else, possessing someone else, just to make Amalia feel.

She hated that it had worked.

Amalia sat up again, heart thudding, mouth dry. She walked across the room.

There, on the chair, the black dress she'd worn tonight still hung limp over the backrest, its fabric heavy with perfume, sweat, smoke… and shame.

She held it close, eyes closed, breathing in the night she swore she wouldn't return to.

She wanted to forget. But Liliana was everywhere now: between her legs, under her skin, in the silence before sleep.