Skin and Blister [Haylee Rae]

[Bellum (DELETED 10155)]

WEARING


There was one great advantage to being dead: no sweating. This far into the night she’d usually be glistening, her hair sticking to hot, damp skin. Shaking her mane out, Edith lifted her arms towards the ceiling and yelled. Laughing as the strobe-lights flashed overhead, she threw her head back and spun. Round and round and round she went, until two hands grasped her hips. Manhandling wasn’t uncommon in a crowd when one went wild; most people didn’t want to get hurt. But, the pawing wasn’t for anyone’s benefit but that of the person holding onto her.

The weight pressing into her backside was both familiar and unwelcome.
The exhilaration she felt extinguished in a flash.

Edith shoved her elbow past her ribcage. Death hadn’t made her particularly stronger, but the force she used was enough to free her. Looking over her shoulder, the mystic threw off the hand lingering on her body. In spite of the flashing lights, she met his gaze. There was no need for words of warning; not when the blacklight made her elongated fangs glow.

She must have looked quite the part given the way her assailant tripped backwards.
It was impossible to repress her smugness. Power was the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Closing her mouth and dragging her tongue across retracting fangs, Edith was reminded of her thirst. The want for blood came and went, like clockwork. All she had discerned in her first week as a vampire, aside from a nightly itch needing scratching, was that her tolerance for ******** decreased exponentially when she’d not yet fed. She’d nearly torn out her step-sister’s throat in a fit of rage after forgoing blood for two nights.

Never again would she allow herself to be so imprudent, or so she had vowed in the privacy of her own mind. A lack of discipline would lead to mistakes, and mistakes would lead to trouble. Turning any of the people on this dance floor into a chew-toy was a recipe for disaster. Now that she’d inhaled the air however, her fangs exposed, every pumping heart in the vicinity was a test to her willpower. If she didn’t get out of here, it’d be a bloodbath.

Surfacing from the crowd was only half the battle won.

As Edith searched the room for a target, she became aware of every living creature. Her gaze landed on a solitary figure at the bar. That solitary figure was a vampire. She emitted nothing; no heartbeat, no warmth. Amidst a sea of sensory feedback, that stranger was a buoy: stillness impersonated.

“Distract me,” she pleaded, all but materialising at the shadow’s side.

“Talk me out of doing something really ******* stupid.”

[Haylee Rae (DELETED 9724)]

WEARING

Nightclubs were not Haylee’s scene.

They were so far from her scene that she felt her skin crawling, itching to let loose the first ‘ability’ she had learned she was capable of – the same as her sire. Shadows. She could slip into them at a moment’s notice and completely disappear from sight, out of mind. Though she knew such a power would do nothing about the cloying nature of clubs, the sweat, the way men thought they had every right to just grab you without asking. And even when they did ask, their breath was generally hot and stunk of beer or spirits, their eyes bloodshot and vague, their slurred words crude and presumptuous.

No, Haylee Rae preferred poetry readings or book launches; she preferred quiet events where alcohol consumption was merely a bonus but not the whole point, where people spoke to each other of intellectual things, not about how nice one’s clothes might look all over the floor of another’s bachelor pad.

However, Haylee’s cause was noble, and her mission short. She had only to sell her product and then leave, though she hoped to be able to do so in an office somewhere and not here at the bar. She stood with plastic folder and clutch grasped in both hands, resting upon the bar top. Her body was rigid, her teeth clenched. The music was too loud, the jostling too irksome, but she was waiting. The bartender had gone off to try and find a manager, and Haylee was waiting for an answer.

The suddenness of the body beside her was startling and yet not entirely unwelcome. Another woman, at least, she could accept. Though the way the woman was dressed, the sheer beauty of her features, the confidence… it only gnawed at Haylee’s lack of confidence, her low self-esteem – her hair was out in bouncy curls over her shoulders and she felt the distinct need to check her make-up. Had her lipstick smeared? Were there black rings around her eyes? No, that’s right – she hadn’t put on any lipstick. Should she have?

”Oh! Ah… from what?” she asked, glancing over the woman’s shoulder, half expecting a scene. But seeing none.