This Feeling of Crimson
The room was dark, lit only by the dim candles that flickered along the walls. It mattered not one way or the other, as they sipped warm blood by the firelight. The two friends were rival at their core, but still to the time to confide in one another.
"I don't like her." Haruka huffed with such an indignant look on her face that it made Shizuru chuckle. "The new girl, she's too… too…I don't even know, but I'm sick of the way she walks around here like she owns the place! Stupid girl tried to bite at me too, keep that little pet of yours up in a cadge if she's got rabies."
"I find her to be quite pleasant, but she has an aversion to blood you see. It makes her difficult to ease." Shizuru said with a shrug, setting her meal down and crossing one leg over the other. The slit in her dress exposed Shizuru's long and slender legs. She paid no mind as she rested an arm over her knee. "In any case, Haruka, she's our newest resident. I'd think it would be wise if we didn't just assume the worst of her."
"You're the one to blame, Fujino…bringing a girl like that here. You must be insane."
Shizuru smiled, she was to blame, and it made her feel warm inside. Such a creature was hers, and part of her didn't know what to do...other than withhold the smirk that would no doubt expose her perfectly white, sharp, fangs. She was far too pleased with herself, far too willing to add another to the ranks. Perhaps, if she gave it a bit of thought, she was insane.
"Her name is Mai. You could call her that, you know."
"Why call a worthless girl like that anything?"
"She's stronger than you think. She lost it when she turned for the first time." Shizuru said as she stood from her place, packing up her wine glass filled with crimson liquid.
Haruka sent Shizuru a disapproving glance. She still didn't agree with keeping such an untamed vampire around. "We're all like that, but you...you let that girl run wild."
"Some more than others." Shizuru relented. "In any case, I ask that you be kind to her, and that you treat her with the same respect that you would treat me, since she's mine."
Haruka shook her head with a sigh. "Whatever you say, Fujino."
Offering up one of her most honest little laughs, Shizuru added, "As for Yukino, the key to a calm change is to let her know what she's getting into. You're a strong vampire, hold her in your arms, and make love to her. I doubt she'll lose her mind like Mai did...I was...perhaps, too unkind."
Shizuru recalled that night well, the night she'd bitten the woman's neck and left her to die in a pool of her own blood. She never expected to care about her…that busty and provocative little human woman with more breasts than sense. That was how she appeared, after all, hands on her hips in that damnable alleyway, yelling at two very young, very brash vampires from Shizuru's fold.
She had doubted that Mai knew, and assumed the worst of the situation, stepping in.
Breaking the wench would be easy, but making her submit…
That was an effort that came from skill, time, and fortitude.
They all lived in a large, well-meaning coven, and in spite of the bloodlust, most of them got along fine. As their age had tempered the bestial urged that growled from within, so had their logic expanded to super human levels.
Mai, she was too young, to hell-bent on feeding, like the ravenous creature that she was. The things nightmares were made of.
Shizuru opened her bedroom door, and closed it behind here. There, inside of the dark room, she felt the danger before she saw it, standing stone still as Mai pounced from the shadows. Biting, scratching, and yanking at Shizuru's tough skin. Another vampire would never be able to rip into her flesh, at least not without fangs, of which the woman had not yet grown.
"It's alright, dear." Shizuru murmured, as she pulled deeply from her glass, cupping Mai's cheek to calm her, and once again claim the woman as her own. She kissed the feral carrot-top, letting the blood flow into the woman's mouth, and down her throat.
Crimson painted their locked lips, and those dark violet eyes became clear once more as she clutched at the black nightdress that Shizuru had given her to wear.
"I-I-I…" Mai stopped, backed up, and put her hand over her mouth. "I did it again, didn't I?"
"You will, quite often." Shizuru said with a shrug. "You must drink to calm the urges, lest you become the myth of the fairytales."
There was red on her fingertips, and a strangely pleasant metallic taste in her mouth. "I don't want to drink it…" Mai said quietly, turning away. "Blood…"
"It's no different than eating a beef burger." Shizuru shrugged as she came around to thumb away the rest of the crimson on Mai's lips, licking what was left. "It's cow's blood. No different really, say if a human would drink their milk. Cow, pig, lamb, any blood will inevitably do. We drink it for the plasma within, not the blood itself."
"Only that, you do drink human blood." Mai said quietly. Somehow, hearing that it had come from livestock hadn't soothed her either.
"I drink what is available." Shizuru murmured quietly, her fingers lifting to caress the bite on Mai's neck, the mark that both changed, and claimed the woman. "You my dear, you will come to learn to do the same." She tried to hand Mai the glass.
The woman refused. "I will not!"
Shizuru sighed, but smiles, shaking her head a little as she once again regarded the glass in her hand. "If you don't, you will die. Although, I've seen other people die for less noble causes." She downed what little was left in the glass, and went over to the fire pit, where more sat at the edge, warm, but not at all hot. She poured it gingerly into the wine glass, and left that on the nightstand. "Come to me then…" Shizuru said while extending her hand. "Allow me to help you."
Mai was nervous, but some part of herself, something she thought to be instinct, told her to do as she was told. It was a part of her nature so new to her, she couldn't avoid the order that found itself lingering in the pit of her gut. She was hungry, she couldn't deny that.
For the past few weeks, this had been the only way to get her by, and she shivered when she neared so close, she could smell her dinner. "Shizuru… I don't think-" and once more that thumb silenced her.
"You think…" Shizuru agreed, as she guided the woman to the bed, kissing her once gently before backing away to close the open window.
"You should not." Shizuru went on to say as she rid herself of her clothing. "So basic is the nature to feed, it's the very essence of breath, to deny that is to deny yourself. Yet, to do that, would be to shun your very nature, such is the twisted turnabout we vampires call life."
Maybe it was true, Mai considered when that warm blood touched her tongue once more, mixing with the much too soft caress of sharp fingernails on her inner thigh, or the hint of danger looming at the base of her neck.
Part of her wanted this though, this feeling of crimson.
Even as she drown within it, and the blackness, lurking in the dead of night.