The Moonlight Dripping Red

"Some creatures do not chase. They wait, until your pride walks you right into their mouth."

🩸🌹🩸

Vampires do not need to hunt.

They invite.

There is no hunger in their walk, no drooling fangs or frantic snarls. That's the myth, the child's version, the bedtime monster.

The truth is far more dangerous.

A vampire seduces reality.

Their power isn't just in the bite, but in the pull. In the invisible, in the silent, the slow.

They don't chase you down. They slip into the edges of your mind, coiling around your thoughts until they taste like your own.

They don't touch you. They change you through a tilt of the head, a smile held too long, a silence that speaks louder than a scream. That's how they unravel humans, not through violence, but through fascination. They don't steal control; they offer the illusion of it, and let you hand yourself over willingly.

Their presence lingers in scent, in memory, in shame. You think of them brushing your hair behind your ear, and suddenly your lover's touch feels clumsy. You remember the sound of their voice in the dark and the morning news seems absurd.

You hear them in the silence between words, in the mirror, behind your eyes. Like perfume you didn't know you were wearing until someone else leaned in and said: "You smell like danger."

And by then it's too late. They've already nested in you.

Desire becomes confusion. Confusion becomes obsession. And eventually, you're no longer walking through your own life, you're stumbling through a fever they planted.

It's not magic. It is attention. And attention, when given by something immortal, is a drug no mortal survives clean.

It starts with a glance. Not a stare, not something obvious, but a moment too long to be innocent. A look that wraps itself around your thoughts and plants a seed. You don't even realize it's been done. Not at first.

You just start thinking. Wondering. Replaying things that didn't matter until they suddenly do.

That's how they get inside.

Vampires don't need claws. They don't need fangs, not right away. They have something more precise: presence. A gravity that bends the air around them, a silence that hums louder than noise.

They don't force the door open, they make you invite them in.

You forget what you were certain of. You remember what never happened.

They don't change reality, they make you doubt yours. They press heat into you without touching, and suddenly your body betrays you. You ache for what you shouldn't. You return to what hurt you. You confuse obsession with want, and hunger with choice.

They don't live in your bed. They live in your mind. And sometimes… that's worse. Because when they leave, they don't take their poison with them. They leave it behind. Beneath the skin. In the silence. In the parts of you that still whisper their name when you lie to yourself.

Vampires do not need permission to enter the mind. They do not knock. They drip.

Their power is not only in their teeth, nor even in their immortal strength. It's in the way they unravel you, slowly, skillfully like a thread being pulled from a hem you didn't know was fraying.

They don't enchant like in the fairy tales.

They infect.

Their beauty is deliberate, sharpened over centuries, worn like a second skin that reflects your deepest want back to you. The kind of beauty that makes people think: "Yes, I dreamed of her once. Yes, I know her. Yes, I'd follow."

They touch more than your skin.They nest behind your eyes. They leave fingerprints on your thoughts.

A vampire can enter your world with a glance, and you won't even notice the moment your version of reality begins to bend. You'll believe it was your idea, to crave them, to return to them, to forgive them. Their cruelty will feel deserved. Their absence, unbearable. You will rewrite every truth you once held close just to stay in their orbit.

And by the time you realize what they've done to you… You'll beg them to do it again.

And Amalia had been warned. Not by words, but by effect.

That vampires don't leave bruises on the body, they leave bruises on the will.

That obsession doesn't always announce itself like thunder; sometimes, it returns like perfume on an old sweater. Subtle. Familiar. Unwelcome, and yet craved.

The female human had promised herself she wouldn't come back. She had told herself she wouldn't return. Not after the spectacle. Not after being humiliated. Not after watching Liliana touch another woman with lips and hands that had once only whispered threats against her skin.

But vows made in the daylight mean nothing under the gravity of night. And Liliana had left something inside Amalia that refused to rot.

And so, with too much eyeliner and not enough pride, she returned to where she had been recently humiliated. Her body and mind still craved, a hunger only the night creature could feed.

🩸🌹🩸🌕🌑🌔🩸🌹🩸

But she didn't return to the club for romance, and certainly not for Liliana's approval... She came with a plan, and it was sharp, clear and calculated.

She would seduce. But not that arrogant vampire.

She would touch another vampire, offer her lips to someone else's hunger, and let Liliana feel the sting of being replaced, even if only for a heartbeat. Not because she wanted to be held. But because she wanted to be noticed.

The club greeted her like it always did, with bass that rippled through the floor and shadows thick with secrets. The lights swam in red and violet, soaking every surface with a false sense of warmth. She didn't search for Liliana, though her skin was alert to her presence. She didn't need to look.

Amalia knew that Liliana was watching.

She always was. And so the female human made her move.

She noticed a man. He was tall, almost regal in the way he leaned against the pillar near the dance floor, his long black hair tucked behind his ears, a few strands falling loose over one shoulder. His skin was moon-pale, and his eyes shimmered with something dangerous. He was beautiful in a way that didn't beg to be adored, he expected it. His shirt hung open at the chest, revealing a body too still to be living.

She didn't bother with introductions. She stepped close, letting her perfume arrive before her words. His gaze dropped to her lips, then lower. He reached out with a slow, deliberate motion, placing one hand on the curve of her waist, his fingers trailing with lazy confidence until they came to rest against her ass.

Amalia didn't flinch. She placed her hand on his bare chest, slipping it beneath the fabric, letting her palm rest over his cold skin. He was smooth, sculpted, and entirely still, a reminder that whatever beat inside her was not mirrored in him.

He leaned down, his breath brushing against her ear.

📍"You smell like someone else." The vampire said smelling Liliana's sent on her

🌹 "I didn't come for her." she smiled without warmth.

The lie tasted strange on her tongue.

Without another word, he kissed her. His lips was rough, insistent and cold. There was no build-up, no tenderness, just possession. His tongue pushed past her lips like he was claiming space, not seeking connection. She kissed him back, feeding the performance. She pressed into him, let her nails graze his skin, let her body become something watched.

She imagined Liliana standing across the room, watching the whole display.

But then, everything shifted.

A sudden, searing pain exploded in her neck. His kiss broke, and in its place she felt the sharpness, not the erotic scrape of teeth against skin, but the puncture. Real, deep and primal.

He was feeding.

She tried to pull away, but his grip tightened. One hand held her by the small of her back, the other pressed to her side, locking her in place. She let out a sound, a gasp choked in silence and pushed against him with both hands.

The room swam. Her limbs began to feel unmoored, light and trembling. Her heart beat too fast, her thoughts too slow. He was drinking from her.

🌹"Stop!" she whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of weakness.

📍"Don't fight." he growled into her ear, the taste of her blood already on his tongue.

But she did fight. She shoved him with all the strength she had left. Her limbs were beginning to tremble, her body tipping into weakness.

The vampire let go with a frustrated hiss, his lips stained with her blood. He licked the corner of his mouth and stared at her with eyes full of contempt.

📍"Stupid girl!" he spat, not angry, but annoyed.

Before she could respond, he was gone. A shadow flickering into deeper darkness.

Amalia stood alone, dizzy, clutching her arm as if it could hold her upright. She felt the alley swayed. Or maybe it was her knees. Her breath came short, ragged. The ache inside her still throbbed, but now it was threaded with nausea.

She braced herself against the cold brick, breath shallow, pulse chaotic beneath the torn skin of her throat. The vampire's departure had left her dizzy, not just from blood loss but from shame.

She used her own body as weapons. And for what?

Whether this had been a victory… or a mistake… she didn't know.

But her blood was on another's lips now. And Liliana knew. And somewhere, beneath her exhaustion and fear… That knowledge thrilled her...

Behind her, silence shifted and he air cooled.

🩸"Did your stupidity pay off?"

The voice slipped down her spine like a cold finger tracing bone.

Amalia turned or tried to. But Liliana was already there, already behind her, as if she'd stepped out of the shadows, summoned by the scent of blood and humiliation.

🩸"Was it worth almost getting yourself killed?"

Her tone was silken and cruel, dripping with disdain.

🩸"Just to prove something?"

Amalia opened her mouth, but nothing came out. The dizziness made the words catch like thorns.

The vampire stepped closer, her heels silent, her scent thick with some floral rot: rose petals and ruin.

🩸"Trying to make me jealous? That's what this was?"

She laughed then, a low, dark sound without a hint of warmth.

🩸"Pathetic. So very human. Do you think you're the first to try and twist my attention like a blade?"

She leaned in, her breath brushing Amalia's jaw.

🩸"I've fucked men, women, creatures older than your gods, and prettier than your lies. I could bend you over right now with another person watching. Or better...participating."

She smiled against Amalia's cheek, and it was sharp enough to draw blood.

🩸"A little threesome with your warm, broken pride wouldn't even stir me. You're not special because you make yourself available."

Amalia flinched, not from the words, but from the truth inside them. She had walked into that club with a war inside her. And she lost. She'd been a girl playing dress-up in the mouth of a lion.

But her voice still rose. Shaky. Defiant.

🌹"Why are you even here then? If I'm so beneath you, why follow me?"

Liliana's gaze darkened, a flicker of something ancient waking behind her pupils.

🩸"Because you reek of need. Because I can taste the betrayal you tried to serve me sweet. You want to be wanted, Amalia. But you don't even know how."

She pulled back then, eyes dragging across Amalia's throat like a blade made of sky.

🩸"Clean yourself up" she said, voice flat.

🩸"I don't feed off desperation."

And with that, she turned and vanished into the dark, leaving Amalia against the wall: wounded, humiliated, but not broken.

Not yet. Because hate, too, was a kind of hunger.

And somewhere inside her, it had just begun to grow.