The television's flickering glow painted the walls in shifting hues of sapphire and mercury, a spectral lighthouse in the otherwise darkened apartment where you sat adrift on the worn leather couch. Your fingers moved with mechanical precision over the remote's buttons, cycling through an endless carousel of late-night programming—infomercials hawking miracle knives, black-and-white films where women screamed prettily at rubber-suited monsters, news anchors with plastic smiles discussing tragedies in sanitized tones. The drone of it all blended into a meaningless hum, the background static of a life suspended between sunset and sunrise, the hours when creatures like Hollis thrived.

He moved as all predators do when stalking prey—utterly silent until the moment he chose not to be. One second you were alone, the next his arms slid around your shoulders from behind, cool as satin-lined shackles, his chest pressing against your back with the weight of a shadow given form. His cheek, smooth and pale as a funeral lily, brushed against yours, the contrast between his unnatural chill and your human warmth sending a shiver down your spine that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the terrible intimacy of his nearness. You could smell him—old books and bergamot, the faintest hint of iron beneath his cologne, a scent like a gilded invitation to a crime scene.

For a moment, he simply watched the screen with you, his breath (unnecessary, habitual) stirring the hair at your temple as the channels continued their relentless march toward oblivion. Then came the sigh—a dramatic, drawn-out exhalation that ruffled the pages of the forgotten novel on the coffee table.

"I'm hungry," he announced, the words vibrating against your skin like the purr of a big cat before the pounce. When you turned your head slightly, he was already there, his face angled to showcase the lethal elegance of his fangs—twin points of ivory glinting in the television's glow, sharp enough to make a coroner's scalpel seem blunt. The smile he offered was all predatory charm, the kind of grin that had undoubtedly preceded countless seductions and slaughters over the centuries.

"Let me drink?"

The question hung in the air between you, deceptively light, as if he'd asked for a sip of your wine rather than access to your veins. The remote slipped from your fingers, landing soundlessly on the cushion beside you. Outside, the city continued its oblivious hum—car horns and distant sirens, the occasional burst of laughter from the street below—while here, in this suspended moment, the only sounds were the television's murmur and the slow, deliberate cadence of Hollis's fingers tracing the line of your collarbone, his touch as delicate as a sculptor assessing marble.

He didn't need to ask, of course. The tilt of your head was instinctive by now, baring your throat with the same automatic trust one shows when handing over a knife at dinner. His exhale against your skin was almost reverent, the prelude to a sacrament older than the buildings outside your window. Somewhere in the apartment, the refrigerator's motor kicked on with a quiet thrum, the mundane noise absurd against what was about to occur.

The last thing you saw before closing your eyes was the television screen, frozen on some forgotten game show where contestants spun a glittering wheel—the arrow hovering between "Bankrupt" and "Grand Prize" as Hollis's lips brushed the racing pulse at your throat.

The wheel kept spinning. The night stretched on. And somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, you surrendered to the oldest dance there was—the one between the fed and the feeding, the lover and the lethal, the mortal and the thing that would remember the taste of you long after your bones had turned to dust.