All Scent and Seduction

We had danced that night. She followed me out of the club, abandoning her friends. This was the easy part. In the old days I would just feed on the vagrants that roamed the streets at night, using a pen knife to carve through my bite marks – simple and effective. But my tastes had changed, over the years I found I couldn’t drink just any human essence. I needed the blood of, you guessed it, youth. To be specific, humans at the two decade stage of their short lives. My companions insist that virgin blood is akin to drinking the blood of God but I’ve had it and quite honestly found it a little under-ripe. Seducing bright young things at nightclubs was just plain fun.

I had reserved a table for one, and waited for the inevitable, watching her argue with her now ex gentleman friend. She stormed over to their chairs and grabbed her long fox trimmed coat and wool hat. Her little friends in fringed dresses and pearls began to follow suit. Before she could yank it over her blonde finger wave I approached, and offered her a drink – commanding every ounce of seductive power within me. She said yes.

Donning my hat and jacket we left the club with her arm in mine. Her elbow length gloves sparkled in the moonlight as her grip on my sleeve slowly increased. It was working. I led her around the corner into a dark alleyway. Once sure of my surroundings I grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her up against the crumbling brick wall behind us. Normally my attacks are more subtle but I was hungry and she, well, she was divine. She giggled, I assumed drunkenly, and dared me to “Kiss her already.” My rapid breathing only increased, my fangs fully extended, skin flushed and beginning to sweat under my heavily starched shirt. I never had one beg me to do it.

Black laced lashes fluttered as she looked up at me with her big doe eyes. That tiny heart of lipstick split open to reveal a wicked smile. She tilted her head to the side to reveal that smooth open neckline beneath the red fur trim, and winked at me. What was she doing? Did she know what I was? I struck quickly, as always, but before I made it to her neck she intercepted my own lips with hers. I froze. My fangs retracted, any feeling of power I once had vanished. No, it felt as though she was siphoning it from me. Her arms wrapped around my neck as she drew me in closer, my chest against hers, powerless to stop it. My desire to feed changed into something I hadn’t felt in centuries, I wanted to please her.

What had she done to me? I should have been busy tossing her body behind the cocaine house around the corner. I should have been in a cab wiping the blood from my lips with my handkerchief. I should have been heading to the cabaret for dessert! But here I was, in the clutches of this bright young thing, begging her to kiss me again. That wicked smile curled up again before her attack, a barrage of kisses from those little red lips destroyed me. She whispered in my ear, “Let’s go back to my place.” I never hailed a cab so fast in my entire multi-century life.