Thirst Beneath the Neon Glow

The music was a dull throb through thick paneled doors, vibrating the gold trim of the framed liquor license behind the desk. Vera Savitch sat in her velvet-backed chair, the sleeves of her midnight blouse rolled high, wrist extended. Behind her, the window overlooked the alley behind Meridian, the city's only nightclub slowly becoming notorious for rumors about the supernatural. She waited, ignoring the way her own pulse grew urgent in her forearm.

Across the desk, the vampire lingered—a slight, wan man who might have looked fifty in good light, though his hair was a pale, drifting shadeless white. Victor, he called himself—his real name belonged to another age. These details pulsed through Vera’s mind, but her gaze was steady as she said, for the second time that night, “I’ll not have you hungry near the crowd. Here. Take enough to keep your wits about you.”

He hesitated—he always did. The etiquette of feeding was unclear. They’d forged it themselves from their mutual desperation: his for blood, hers for protection, power, the fatal thrill of the arrangement. He wrapped his chilled fingers gently around her wrist. The bite was never sharp, and it hurt less than she’d expected. There was a dull pressure, and then a cool, deep draw, as her blood—her very self—passed into him.

She felt dizzy when he finished, lips pressed lightly to her skin to seal the wound. He caught her gaze and bowed his head, contrite and grateful. She withdrew her arm, wrapping it in a black silk scarf she kept tucked in the drawer for this ritual. Her heart stuttered; her mind, for a moment, was far away. But the music, the pulse of the club, called her back.

“I need a drink,” she muttered, standing.

“Are you well?” Victor’s voice was like a whisper on ice.

She forced a smile and made her way from the office. Her footsteps were sure, if only out of long practice. Already the blood loss was a fading dizziness, easily masked as she threaded through her club. The staff knew not to ask her questions—there was an unspoken rule. What their employer did with the strange pale man in the office was not their business.

At the bar, neon light shimmered off glass shelves. The bartender—a stocky woman with a fresh tattoo visible below her rolled sleeve—nodded as Vera approached. “Usual, Ms. Savitch?”

“Not tonight,” Vera said, lowering her voice. “Whiskey. Add from the dark bottle in the safe.” It was the code they’d agreed on—a mixture Victor himself had given her, more potent than any liquor: some ancient, thick wine in which he’d dissolved a spoonful of his own blood, left to mature for years. Its effects were subtle. Most mortals never tried it twice.

The bartender’s eyes flickered, but she complied without a word. Vera watched as the whiskey and wine-blood swirled together—a honeyed amber flooded by a crimson stain, blooming and roiling like a wound.

With glass in hand, Vera returned the way she’d come.

Back in her office, Victor had retreated behind the desk, his features drawn, his eyes nearly black. For a moment, Vera paused, her hand on the doorknob. She observed his posture—the way his hands shook, the way his gaze pleaded to look away. There was hunger, always, but something else: shame, perhaps. Or loneliness.

She pressed the glass into his pale fingers. “Drink,” she said softly. “Let it be less bitter.”

Victor accepted it, reluctant and reverent, eyes flickering up to meet hers. For a moment, the silence between them was tender and electric, heavy with all they’d given each other. She watched as he sipped, and some color returned to him—a mere suggestion, as if someone had painted him with the faintest blush.

She knew she should be afraid. Most nights, she was. But as she watched him savor her offering, Vera felt a flicker of compassion—raw, unexpected, and painfully human. Once, she thought, she might have pitied him. Now she simply understood: survival bound them both. In the darkness of her office, amidst the thrum of the distant club and the peculiar pain still blossoming in her wrist, Vera Savitch saw Victor not as a monster, but as kin—an exile from the living world, made monstrous by hunger and hope.

He drank, and she watched, and for a while their shadows blurred together on the office floor—hers mortal and fleeting, his lingering and inhuman, entwined in sanctuary and trust. And in this moment—bleak and rare—her heart ached with something dangerously close to love.

This story was generated by user ziggo.zane with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

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