Maria’s knees are melting, the joints loose and liquid. They won’t hold her weight reliably, buckling whenever she thinks she’s steady, forcing her to collapse onto the man walking beside her. He always laughs, low and slithering, and nudges her back upright, hands lingering on her arm. She wants to pull away from him – the reason why is lost in the thick haze settled over her, but she knows that he makes her skin crawl – but can never quite manage it.

The ballroom explodes out around them, and Maria’s feet almost come clean out from under her. She raises her boulder-heavy head and gazes blearily around the packed room, flinching at the sharp violins assaulting her ears.

Figures, everywhere, in clothes as colourful and fantastical as the most lavish costume drama, and just as archaic. They glitter with jewels, shimmer with silk and satin and glittering face powder, glow with precious metals. The crowd swirls around her, dancing and milling about; always a little too fast, a little too fluid. One of them veers close, and she stumbles away, falling back into another hard, cool body that moves to support her. She tries to pull away from this one too, but only manages to squirm, weak as a kitten, in her arms.

The monster cradling her bends and presses her face into Maria’s neck, taking a deep sniff. “A hunter!” she exclaims, and Maria can feel the stretched curve of the beast’s smile pressed against her bared neck.

They’d taken her gorget, the thick leather that had hugged her throat as solid and comforting as a friend’s arm. Without it, she feels painfully naked.

“Freshly caught,” the vampire who’d brought her here agrees, and that silver-arrow slice of rage in Maria’s guts wants to tear him open. Instead, she lets her eyes unfocus and stare off at the far wall, decorated with a massive gilt-edged mirror, as well-kept an antique as any monster here.

In that mirror, she stands almost alone in the ballroom, leaning back on nothing. Her eyes are wide and very dark, her cheeks blood-flushed under her tan. She looks helpless, desperate.

Tearing her eyes away, she focuses on the other scattered figures she can see in the mirror. All of them young, pretty, clothed in a variety of styles – whatever their masters found most appealing, she assumes. One of them, a beautiful blond man, is swaying gently in the air, head tipped back, eyes fluttering.

Two vivid red puncture marks stand bright on his exposed neck. As she watches, sick to the pit of her, blood trickles down from them, before vanishing. Like it’s been licked up.

Maria’s eyes burn as she closes them, and when they open again, she’s been turned away from the mirror, carried further into the crowd. The man, the victim, is lost.

Trying dazedly to find him again, Maria’s eyes skip over the flash of vivid red hair. It’s only when something catches at the back of her sodden brain that she turns her head, retraces her glance until she sees –

Her. Magdalena , she’d called herself when they first met. The only living vampire whose name Maria knows.

The only one she’d let live. And hadn’t that been an interesting mission report?

She locks gazes with the vampire, stupidly relieved to see recognition in her eyes. That pale, sharp face is as perfectly expressionless as one of the fine marble statues dotted tastefully around the ballroom.

It’s not that Maria thinks she can trust this monster. She’s not that foolish. But every other monster in this room wants to rip her throat out, and when they’d… met, Magdalena had been given all the opportunities in the world to do just that, and had refused every one.

Please , she mouths through slack lips. Magdalena inclines her head, and says nothing, and Maria wants to scream, spit at her – how dare she be so relaxed? Fuck, she could at least look happy about Maria’s impending death, so Maria would know her as a monster as vile as the rest of them.

Then the vampire with a grip on her arm spins her around, and Magdalena is lost in a whirl of colour and light. She tries so hard not to stumble, not to look like the helpless prey-thing they’ve made her, but the monster always seems to know how to throw her off-balance. Maria’s throat is thick with humiliated rage.

The prickling of hungry eyes on her should be setting fire to her muscles, pushing her forward to slash and stab and wreck these smug, decaying fiends in this place where they feel most safe. But all she can do is follow the arc she’s guided into, head lolling and neck bared for any beast who fancies a look.

“Is that really an Artemisian, then? Or did you just dress some poor virgin up in a costume?” Oh hell. She knows that voice.

“Magdalena, my dear!” her captor exclaims, bringing them to a stop. “I assure you, she’s the genuine article.” He twirls Maria in his arms to face Magdalena, a finely-carved statue in deep peacock blue, gold accents glittering in the chandelier’s glow. Her gown reminds Maria of Art Nouveau, for all that she knows Magdalena is far older than a single century.

“Go on,” the vile thing continues, sliding his hand under her arm and raising it like a marionette’s. “You can smell it on her, you know.”

Those dancing green eyes meet hers, and there’s the delight that she’d wanted to see. Anger burns low and heady in Maria’s gut as Magdalena leans in, takes a deep breath like she’s some rich aesthete at a wine tasting.

“Surprisingly, you’re right,” she murmurs – to the other vampire, with his hand still set proprietarily on her waist, but her eyes are still fixed on Maria’s. “Almost as if moonlight had a scent. How curious.” Her eyes flick away, pressing closer until Maria is caught between them. “What will you give me for her?”

Her captor lets out a laugh that almost doesn’t sound fake. “You really want this one? She’s rather unbroken, you know how her kind get. Tends to, ah, slip the noose.”

“Are you sure you’re not overstating the difficulty?” Magdalena purrs. “After all, you’ve managed to contain her.” She shoots Maria a look, play along , and as bitter as her anger is, it’s easy to go limp, to allow herself to be drawn into this familiar monster’s arms. Magdalena holds her gently against her side, but her arm might as well be a steel bar for all that Maria can move away.

“She’s rather valuable,” her captor says, voice dripping so thick with greed the sound may as well be slime. “A true hunter. I shudder to think how many of our people have died at her blade.”

With her head tilted up, she can see the sly look spreading across Magdalena’s face. “Marcel, I trust you remember Helsinki as I do, yes?”

“I’m not entirely sure I’d go that far…” he trails off as one of Magdalena’s slim fingers chucks him lightly under the chin.

“I think we’re both well aware of what occurred,” Magdalena replies brightly. “Perhaps, with that in mind, you could see fit to part with this prize? For my sake? It’d make me so happy, dear.”

The look her captor gives Magdalena could burn through sheet metal. Even so, he lets his hated hands drop for Maria’s waist, and then the only thing holding her up is Magdalena.

For a single swaying moment, Maria allows herself to imagine she might be something approaching safe.

“You don’t want to sample the wares?” her captor inquires, and Maria tenses again. Her gaze flicks up to Magdalena, trying to gauge her reaction.

She seems calm, unruffled. “A woman can’t eat her dinner in peace?”

“Oh, of course, of course!” the vampire laughs. “Only, I’d hate to have you disappointed again, my dear.”

There’s some subtext there, something Maria can’t read, but that makes Magdalena’s eyebrow arch and her gaze sharpen. “Indeed,” she says, and the bottom drops out of Maria’s stomach.

No , she mouths, but Magdalena isn’t watching this time.

A cool hand slides into her hair, working her tight braid looser, tilting her head to the side. Maria tries to fight it, tries so hard it almost works , but then the hand tightens and forces her to meet Magdalena’s gaze and –

Her irises are a deeper green than Maria had thought possible, light glancing off every strand of emerald-tinted muscle. And her pupils – so deep, so dark. Hidden forest pools she could drop straight into and drown.

“Calm, my darling,” Magdalena tells her, and Maria does. It’s that easy. When she dips her head and noses at Maria’s exposed neck, staying still and letting it happen is nothing at all.

Magdalena’s lips are so sweetly cool on her pulse, parting to sigh a chilled breath over her neck. Her tongue flicks out, soft and wet and a little rough, and Maria can’t stop herself from shivering when a delicate scrape of teeth follows its path.

Everything slows to a stop; the music, chatter and laughter fading out of her awareness. When Magdalena’s teeth sink through her skin, it’s as if they’re the only two left in the world.

It doesn’t hurt. She hadn’t expected that. The cleaving of her flesh, something else entering – it should feel like being stabbed. This is… very much not like being stabbed.

For a moment, she hangs suspended, unable to breathe through the shock of being pierced, entered . Then the warmth starts to spread, trickling through her artery and spilling straight into her brain. A whimper bleeds from her slack lips as Magdalena’s teeth slide from her. Then that maddeningly cool mouth closes around the wound she’s left, and Maria grips the slippery-smooth silk of Magdalena’s dress, bracing herself.

It’s not enough.

The suction drags at her, and Maria arches into it helplessly, mewling. Hot, wet drawing, as if Magdalena is running her fingers over Maria’s own naked soul, drinking her down. Maria can feel her eyes rolling back in her head, her body shaking as it tries to process the crashing waves of alien pleasure.