Crimson Bond

The bass was a physical thing, a relentless fist pounding against Aeliana’s ribs. It vibrated through the sticky floor, up her legs, and settled deep in her bones, shaking her from the inside out. Strobe lights fractured the darkness, catching glimpses of sweat-slicked skin, parted lips, and wide, ecstatic eyes. For the mortals, it was a party. For Aeliana, it was a special kind of hell.

Every pulse of the music echoed the frantic, intoxicating rhythm of the hearts surrounding her. Hundreds of them, a symphony of life beating just beneath a thin layer of skin. The air was thick with the scent of cheap perfume and spilled liquor, but underneath it all was the rich, metallic tang of blood. It coated her tongue, sharpened her senses, and made the new, gnawing hunger in her belly twist into a vicious knot.

She had only been this… thing… for a month. A month of hiding in shadows, of fighting an enemy that lived inside her own veins. Her sire had called the hunger a gift, a key to true power. But in this sea of fragile, warm bodies, it felt like a curse.

A young man with a constellation of freckles across his nose stumbled into her, his laugh bright and careless. "Whoa, sorry there," he slurred, steadying himself with a hand on her arm. His touch was warm, a stark contrast to the chill of her own skin. His pulse thrummed against her fingertips, a frantic, irresistible drumbeat.

Get away, she tried to think, but the thought was a wisp of smoke in a hurricane. His scent filled her head—salt and youth and the sweet, irresistible promise of life. His head was tilted, his neck exposed as he grinned down at her. The artery there pulsed, a dark, alluring vein just for her.

The hunger snapped its leash.

From a shadowed alcove near the bar, Darian watched. He’d been nursing a glass of whiskey, the amber liquid a familiar anchor in the chaos. He wasn’t here for the music or the company. He was here to hunt. For an hour, he’d been a statue, his gaze sweeping the crowd, searching for the tell-tale signs: the predator’s stillness, the unnatural grace, the eyes that held a darkness far older than the body they occupied.

He saw her just as the freckled boy stumbled into her. He’d noticed her earlier—too pale, too still, her beauty sharp and unsettling. Now, he saw the change. The subtle widening of her eyes, the way her lips parted just enough to reveal the tips of her canines. It was the moment before the strike, a moment he knew as well as his own reflection.

The movement was too fast for any human eye to follow. One second, the boy was grinning, the next he was slumping against her, his expression slack with shock. Aeliana’s head was bent to his neck, her dark hair shielding the point of contact. Darian was already moving before the boy’s friends could even register that something was wrong. He pushed through the dancing bodies, his purpose a cold, hard line through the club's feverish energy. He expected a feral frenzy, a messy kill. But as he got closer, he saw not the ecstasy of the feed, but the opposite. Her body was rigid, her posture one of utter horror.

Her fangs retracted with a painful click, tearing the skin she’d just punctured. A choked sob escaped her throat, a ragged, human sound that was utterly out of place with the act she’d just committed. She shoved the boy away from her, his limp body stumbling back into the throng of dancers who absorbed his fall without notice. Blood, bright and stark, bloomed on the collar of his shirt. On her lips, it tasted of ash and regret. Her eyes, wide and shimmering with unshed tears, were fixed on the wound she had created, on the life she had almost stolen.

This was the moment Darian always waited for. The moment of truth. His hand was already inside his leather jacket, fingers wrapped around the familiar, worn handle of the hawthorn stake he favored. It was a simple, clean motion he’d practiced a thousand times: drive it through the heart, sever the connection to their unholy life, and watch the monster turn to dust. It was his purpose, his penance.

But he stopped, his feet planted on the sticky floor, his arm frozen mid-draw. He had seen countless vampires feed. He had seen the feral glee, the cold satisfaction, the monstrous hunger sated. He had never, not once, seen this. He had never seen disgust. He had never seen self-loathing so profound it seemed to physically cripple the creature. Her entire frame trembled, not with power, but with revulsion. She looked at her own hands, at the faint smear of blood on her knuckles, as if they belonged to someone else.

The boy was still alive, his pulse thready but present. He was dazed, likely from the venom in her bite, a natural anticoagulant and anesthetic. He wouldn't remember this. But she would. The horror etched on her face was more profound than any he had ever witnessed, human or otherwise. She wasn't a monster reveling in her power. She was a soul trapped in a cage of instinct, horrified by the bars she couldn't break.

The stake in his hand felt unnaturally heavy. Killing her would be an execution, yes, but it felt less like putting down a rabid animal and more like putting down a terrified victim. A different instinct, one long-buried under years of cynicism and violence, stirred within him. It was a flicker of something he hadn’t felt in years: mercy.

His decision was made in the space between two thunderous beats of the music. His hand abandoned the stake, instead retrieving a slim, metal syringe from another pocket. The plunger was filled with a clear liquid, a potent sedative of his own design, formulated to drop a vampire into a deep, dreamless stupor.

He closed the final few feet between them in two long strides. She didn't notice him until he was right behind her, his presence a sudden block of cold in the overheated club. She spun around, her tear-filled eyes widening in alarm. There was no fight in her, only a deer-in-the-headlights terror. He didn't give her time to process. His left arm snaked around her waist, pulling her back against his chest, holding her fast. With his right hand, he plunged the needle into the side of her neck.

She let out a small gasp, her body tensing for a moment before the sedative hit her system like a sledgehammer. Her muscles went slack, her head lolling back against his shoulder. Her eyes fluttered, the dark lashes stark against her pale skin, and then they closed. He caught her full weight, a fragile burden in the heart of the chaos, and began to move toward the exit.

He moved through the pulsing crowd with the unconscious girl in his arms, a ghost in the machine. No one gave him a second glance; he was just another shadow in a club full of them, perhaps carrying a friend who’d had too much to drink. He navigated the back alleys with a practiced ease, the city’s concrete veins as familiar to him as his own.

The apartment was on the fourth floor of a nondescript brick building. The only thing that marked it as different was the door—a slab of reinforced steel with three separate deadbolts. Inside, the chaos of the city fell away, replaced by an oppressive, weighted silence.

Aeliana woke to it. The silence. It was the first thing she registered, a stark absence after the relentless bass of the club. The second was the scent. Not the cloying sweetness of blood, but something clean and sharp, like antiseptic, layered over the smells of old leather, gun oil, and dried herbs.

She was lying on a couch, the leather cracked and cool against her cheek. Her head throbbed, a dull ache behind her eyes, and her limbs felt heavy, disconnected. She pushed herself up slowly, her gaze sweeping the room. It was a hunter’s den. There was no other way to describe it. Books on folklore and anatomy were stacked high on metal shelves. An array of meticulously cleaned blades was laid out on a cloth on a heavy wooden table. The windows weren't just glass; she could see the dark lines of steel bars set into the brick outside. Her heart, a useless and still organ, somehow managed to plummet.

This was the home of her natural enemy. She should be dust.

“You’re awake.”

The voice was low and calm, devoid of emotion. It came from an armchair in the corner, shrouded in shadow. Aeliana’s head snapped toward the sound, her body tensing, every instinct screaming at her to flee. But there was nowhere to go.

He leaned forward, the low light from a single lamp catching the hard planes of his face. It was the man from the club. The hunter. He wasn’t holding a weapon, but he didn’t need to. His entire posture was a weapon—controlled, patient, lethal. He watched her not as a man watches a woman, but as a trapper watches a wolf caught in his snare.

Her throat was dry. Words felt like shards of glass. “Why… why am I not dead?” she finally managed to whisper, the sound fragile in the heavy silence.

Darian didn’t answer immediately. He simply held her gaze, his eyes a piercing, unreadable gray. He had seen her horror, her self-loathing. He had seen the girl beneath the monster. And against every rule he had ever lived by, he had made a choice. Now, he had to live with it.

He picked up a glass of water from a small table beside him and pushed it across the floor toward her. It stopped a few feet from the couch. A peace offering. Or a test.

She stared at the glass, then back at him. Fear was a cold knot in her stomach, but beneath it, a flicker of confusion. He hadn’t killed her. He had brought her here, to his fortress, and laid her on his couch. In this quiet, fortified room, an impossible truce hung in the air, fragile and unspoken. He was the hunter. She was the hunted. And for some reason he had yet to explain, the game had changed.