No one mentioned what had happened earlier, nor what was about to happen. They all automatically found their seats, leaving Jane no choice but the large sofa meant for two.
"So, where is Amelia?" She broke the silence. Her hands rested neatly on her thighs, creating a shell for her fingers to hide. Her back stayed straight, like behind her was something scary.
"Busy," Alina replied without looking up from her book. "Somewhere,"
"Are you gonna be…okay? For doing that to him." Jane carefully asked.
"It's fine." Alina's fingers flipped through the pages. "Everything that happens down here stays here."
She paused, then added, "As long as it's nothing serious."
Scary. Because that rule was clearly not written to protect someone like her.
"Good to know," she said awkwardly.
All the talking and still, nothing happened. Alice had already wandered to a more crowded crowd, Alina returned to her book, while Rose leaned against her hand with her eyes half open.
Everyone had found a purpose. Everyone but Jane.
Couldn't say that Jane was disappointed, but she… was. She had accepted her new role, as she should for everything Rose had done, and yet nothing happened as she had planned.
Waiting and waiting was killing her. There were things that needed to be done, and until they were, she couldn't rest.
"Okay," Jane said. "Let's do it!"
Rose was surprised, or even delighted. Her eyes lifted, letting the light shine through, revealing a reddish amber.
Jane instantly regretted opening her mouth. She looked at Rose and Alina, who were making some sort of weird eye contact.
Yes, she had definitely stabbed herself in the back.
"Or maybe-"
The space shifted.
An invisible force stretched outward, drawing a clean boundary between the sofa and the rest of the room. The world beyond was blurred and muted, but not completely unreachable.
Both of them were put into a translucent cube of air, one that was big enough for Jane to even walk around.
She stepped toward its edge. As thin as it seemed, her hand sank into an elastic stretchy layer and bounced back.
"Amazing!" Jane whispered as she moved her hand in the membrane.
"She can feel it," Rose's voice came from behind. She was in the same position, eyes following her only source of entertainment.
"Really? Can she hear me?" Jane curiously waved her hand and called out: "Alina, Alina!"
No response.
"Then how do you get out?"
"You knock on the thing. Three knocks." Rose said casually. It was hard to tell whether she was lying or not because how could you knock on something that was more like water than a door?
"Really? That's simple?"
"Yeah, you can try it."
"No need," Jane said. She didn't want to make a fool out of herself.
The sofa bounced with Jane's attendance. Her hands pressed against the soft leather while her eyes wandered everywhere, except to the other side of the sofa.
"The process isn't scary, Jane," Rose said. "It was quite the opposite. Joy, sadness, or nothing at all…. Each person experiences it differently, but none feels pain."
Jane listened carefully. Her eyebrows slightly furrowed, giving the opposite illusion that she was dissecting the words.
"I know many who become addicted to the sensation," Rose added quietly. Her eyes drifted towards the floor, far and distracted. Then she looked up.
"You're unusually quiet."
Jane blinked. "What?"
She could see that Rose wasn't mad. It was something else, like she had seen something interesting. But that hint of excitement disappeared too fast for Jane to understand.
"Our enzyme has… special properties. Equal or even stronger than drugs." She smiled, an inviting one.
Jane finally remembered. A feeling that words couldn't describe, out-of-control but undeniably good.
"Do you have something sharp?" She needed to prepare.
Rose raised her eyebrow: "For what? Am I that scary?"
"No, no. He said my taste is … you know, S, what if it was… too good?" She pressed her lips together. Saying this was embarrassing but necessary.
Rose burst out laughing. "Oh, please. That was nothing more than an upsell."
She paused for a moment while rubbing her chin: "Well, they do taste better. But it is more of a… status, an accessory."
Then she tossed something in Jane's direction, despite the absurdity she had just heard.
"Here. Take this."
A pin, a lightning-shaped piece of diamond set inside a golden frame. Sharp and pointy at the edges, yet would only leave a mark at best. The real weapon was the needle at its back, made to pierce through their uniform.
Rose's palm was reddened from holding the pin at the wrong angle.
"Ready?"
"Yes."
Jane closed her right eye, the one that allowed her to see Rose. Her left eye stayed barely open, peeking through a narrow window as she braced herself for the sharp pain to come.
There was something Rose had missed: in the milliseconds when flesh was torn, and the injection had not yet begun, an immense pain came first. Intense enough to make the prey react violently until the body finally gave up.
And Jane didn't want to experience those milliseconds, even if heaven waited beyond them.
Rose's laughter brushed against Jane's skin, cutting through her fear and tangled thoughts, her fangs hanging just a few centimeters away.
"Have you seen your face?"
"Sorry," Jane said while scooting in closer, though her stiff neck still held her body at an awkward diagonal.
"Okay. Read-"
-y.
Fast and instant.
The last thing Jane saw was Rose's transformation. Her mouth opened wide, fangs long and big, eyes darkening to almost black.
A beautiful cobra.
Jane laid her head back on the sofa. The cold leather pressed against her neck, but it didn't matter. Her body vibrated, then dissolved into smaller molecules. She was… everywhere, deep beneath the water, scattered through the air, drifting across the universe.
No feeling. No pain. No nothing at all.
Though her thoughts were still so loud.
How would they clean the chandelier? Would the cleaner be human or vampires?…
But they eventually stopped. Endless voices were nothing more than drips in an ocean, creating ripples across the surface before fading into silence.
If anyone broke through the bubble, they would see a peaceful scene. A sleeping beauty, with a faint smile resting on her face. They would wonder what she had seen in her dream to create such a smile, and whether it would vanish the moment she woke up.
***
The heavy book closed, signifying that its owner had finally had enough of reading, or, in this case, that something far more important had caught Alina's attention.
Thirty minutes had passed.
There was never a precise timing to Rose's feeding, but it had never been this long.
The room remained unchanged: low conversations about who wanted whom, people drifting from one group to another. And somewhere in a darker corner, she would find her sister, as usual.
"Alice, come here."
Alice didn't answer at first. She was resting, as she should, after having her stomach full.
"What?" Alice finally walked towards her sister. The heaviness on Alina's face struck her as odd until her eyes landed on the space where the sofa should have been, still swallowed by the barrier.
"How long has it been?" Alice asked.
"30 minutes. Can you come in and check?"
"Me? What if she gets mad?" True story.
"Get in!" Alina raised her voice. If she could, she would have gone in herself.
"No, don't."
Rose walked out. Her hair was scattered, one hand pressed to the side of her neck while her feet moved relentlessly forward.
"How long can you keep it, Alina?"
"I'm not sure. I've never left it for more than an hour," Alina said.
"Well, it's time to test that."
"What happened?" Alina asked.
Jane hadn't come out. The worst possibility was death, but that alone wouldn't explain the brief flicker of fear on Rose's face when she broke through the cube.
"I lost control," Rose said. The burning pain had dragged her back to reality, but the taste still lingered on her tongue.
"None of us can go in," She added. "Alice, go get Amelia."
"Is she…?" Alice asked carefully. She needed to brace herself, so did Amelia, just in case what awaited them was a body instead of a person.
No, she didn't.
Lost deep inside her drifting thoughts, Jane stumbled upon a strange one, urging her to look to the left.
Left? she wondered. What was on her left? And tilted her head to the side.
Far, far away, on another couch, was a familiar face.
Amelia.
So that's where she went!
A little joy warmed Jane's chest. She kept her eyes half-open, fixed on Amelia, waiting for her to turn around, but the expectation soon turned into horror.
Amelia's eyes glistened while her lips slightly parted. Her limbs moved restlessly against the cushions, trying to escape the pleasure.
For a moment, they mirrored each other, same posture, same stillness, until Amelia's body jerked once, then loosened, sinking into the couch.
It was so subtle that no one else would notice, except for Jane.
Her gaze drifted downward, from Amelia's face to the edge of her skirt, where a hand disappeared.
A sickening feeling rose in her stomach, disgust at the one who did it, and at the one who allowed it.
She knew life wasn't pink. Hunger went hand in hand with other things. But in public? Really?
But beneath the disgust was something worse. Realization.
There were many ways Jane had imagined leaving this world, quietly in her sleep, surrounded by her grandchildren, or something heroic, dying while trying to save the world. And this… until now.
"Rose, Rose. Wake up!" Jane grunted.
Rose didn't even budge an eye.
Jane sighed and stared up at the ceiling. She had known this would happen, but still believed in the 30% that it might not.
She raised her hand to the edge of the shield. Three knocks, Rose said.
Liar.
Nothing changed.
There was only 1 way left.
Jane switched the pin to her right hand; her left hand clamped around Rose's head. There were other spots, but the neck felt perfect.
With one deep breath, her arms swung, and the pin pierced straight through where it needed to.
"Ahhhhhhh...!" Tears spilled from Jane's eyes. She forgot to account for the madness of the beast. Of course, Rose wouldn't magically let go of her neck.
Like a child biting into its mother's hand, like a woman in labor clenching down on a piece of cloth, Rose bit harder into Jane's flesh.
Fire tore through Jane's neck. She couldn't look, but from the sound alone, she knew her skin was ripped off.
Rose finally woke from her thirst. She spat the residue onto a piece of paper and looked at Jane, who had already slumped to the side in an awkward, uncomfortable position.
"I told you my blood tasted goôd." Jane closed her eyes.
"Wait here," Rose said, before hurrying outside.
Jane cracked one eye open. No one left, just her.
She slid a hand into her pocket and fished out a pill. All the while, her eyes stayed closed, her body twisted at an awkward angle on the couch: upper half barely clinging to the seat, legs dragging against the floor, nearly ninety degrees off.
Playing dead was only part of it. The other reason was simpler: moving her head hurt too much.
Then another set of footsteps reached her ears.
Whoever came in next lifted her legs from the floor and settled them higher onto the cushion.
Jane cracked one eye open and met Amelia's worried face. It was awkward, considering what she had seen just earlier.
"Don't move! You've just lost a lot of blood," Amelia said. She grabbed a piece of white cloth and pressed it against Jane's neck.
"Ouch—" Jane instinctively jerked her head away, then quickly clamped the cloth there herself. Her skin hadn't grown back yet.
Her eyes wandered over Amelia's busy back. She seemed skillful at handling wounds.
"I'll be fine. Truly. Remember, that was how I got away last time," Jane said.
Amelia's face went blank. Maybe she didn't remember.
"But thank you," Jane added quickly.
"You're welcome," Amelia smiled back. Her eyes were dull, and a faint bruise still lingered around her neck.
There were so many things Jane wanted to ask, mostly out of concern. But who was she to judge? So she swallowed her questions and simply watched Amelia move around the space.
"Here. Eat it." Amelia held something out. "This is my last one for this month. So you're very lucky." Bitterness threaded through her voice.
Just like that, all of Jane's assumptions and wild thoughts fell silent.
Amelia was nice to her. And that was all she cared about.
"Was it limited monthly?" Jane asked. Her hand had already slipped into her pocket.
"Yes. We get about six pills," Amelia said.
"Here. I've just received mine." Two red pills rested neatly in the center of her palm.
She carefully placed them into Amelia's hand and closed it.
"To repay, for that time you helped me," Jane said. She hoped Amelia wouldn't mind that there was no wrapper.
"Oh yeah! No wonder one was missing." Amelia said. The good news breathed a little life back into her pale face.
"Eat it. You need it too. I suppose," Jane added.
She knew she could never erase the image from her mind, but time might replace it with better memories. As it always did.