Page 3 of The Sins That Bleed

Sour Cherries

VALESKA

“ Y ou’re back early, it’s only two-thirty in the morning.” Sunny’s chirpy voice intercepts the clicking of my stilettos as they hit the gleaming tiles beneath me.

“He left.”

I reach my desk and sink into the black suede chair, kicking my feet up to rest on top of my desk.

I was foolish tonight—he’d seen me, I’m sure of it, but I couldn’t help myself.

I’m drawn to him. Call it curiosity, but the darkest pieces of him speak to me, and when our gazes collided before those elevator doors closed, they ricocheted inside a place I thought long vacant and hollow.

A place I haven’t sensed anything for a long time.

“What happened? Oh my god, he didn’t see you, did he?” She blows a bubble with her gum, a habit she has when she starts to worry. “Please tell me he didn’t see you, V. You were only supposed to go in and drop the informat?—”

“He saw me but only my eyes, his human ones wouldn’t have been able to see much when the lights went out. Don’t give me that look, Sunny.”

She stands with her hands on her hips, her split-dye, red-and-pink lob tilted with the angle of her head in disapproval. She may be short, but she doesn’t take any shit from anyone, not even me, despite her nickname being Sunny.

“You know you can’t risk yourself like that, it’s not safe, and if anything happened to you…” she trails off, not needing to finish the sentence, we’ve been down this road before.

I push away from my desk, rounding it in the blink of an eye until I’m standing in front of her.

I raise my hands, near colourless palms pointing to the ceiling as I wait for her to take them.

With a sigh, she slips her small hands in mine and I squeeze them gently, trying to reassure her that everything will be okay.

“You forget I’ve been in existence for a long time; it would take more than this to end me, Sunny, so I’m not going anywhere.

I don’t give a fuck if he saw me, because there’s no chance he’ll tell anyone about it.

He’d be locked up in an asylum before he could finish recounting what he saw.

He’s probably convinced himself by now that he imagined it. ”

She pops another nervous bubble, and the tutti-fruity flavour hits my nostrils, pulling a grin from me. A signature flavour I will always associate with my best friend and right-hand woman. I watch my words swirl behind her eyes, matching the marbled red-and-blue shade of her eyes.

The tension leaves her and she relaxes. “I know, I know. Just promise me you won’t take any more unnecessary risks, will you? I’m going to have an aneurysm or heart attack one of these days. Did you get the drop in at least?”

I can’t help but laugh; she forgets so easily that her body is now frozen in time.

“I promise to be more cautious for the sake of your sanity. There’s only room for one of us in this friendship to be psychotic and I claimed it first. As for the drop, I slipped it in after he left so he’ll find it in the morning. Now, shall we eat?”

She chuckles before her nose scrunches up; she’s still not quite used to the idea of needing to survive off blood for the rest of her existence. I managed to find a way to infuse the blood we drink by drying it down to a powder and blending it with different flavours after it’s extracted.

I will never forget the sorrow and fear emanating from her at being that close to another person, the smell too overwhelming for her, so I fixed the problem. Sunny prefers the sweet, strong flavours much like her gum, but me, I’ve grown fond of cherry.

The thought of indulging in some cherry-flavoured blood has my throat burning with thirst—it’s been a while since I last fed. Tonight may have ended differently had the agent’s partner not come for him when he did. I don’t tell Sunny though, she’d cuss me out for hours about it.

“Okay, I am feeling peckish.”

I lounge on the soft floor cushions, my heels long kicked off somewhere by the entrance of the door with my blazer, as my feeding high buzzes through my body.

Sunny sits opposite me as we watch the colours of light shifting in waves across the patterned ceiling in the otherwise darkened room.

This is as close to taking drugs as a vampire can get, so I built a room for us to switch off and relax, a place we could be vulnerable away from circling vultures.

Chill music plays in the background whilst the smell of cherries and strawberries permeate the air.

My mind drifts back to the haunted face of the agent.

I want to tie him down and sink deep into his mind, body, and soul, pick him apart until there is nothing but sinew and bones before me after I’ve used them to curate a picture of who he is at his core.

He’s pretty for a human that works too many hours and a stressful job. I’d seen many his age that worked themselves into an early old skin, but he’s managed to keep it at bay. I picture the moustache he sports in my mind, a tidy one to go with a dusting of stubble along his jaw.

My fangs sink into my lower lip as my thoughts take a sordid turn. One where I’m straddling his face as he devours me at my core, the urge to breathe battling with the need to pleasure me.

“Do you think you’ll ever switch your blood infusion from cherry to something else?”

Sunny’s voice pops my filthy thoughts with a question I’ve often asked myself. I consider it for a moment, but I’m too addicted to the flavour and scent now.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s so delicious, not to mention the fruit is my favourite colour, it’s so decadent to me. It reminds me of another time.”

My words are slow in my relaxed state, and she laughs, deep from her belly. I love how hard she laughs at the slightest thing she finds funny. It sets me off and it takes us a moment to stop.

“I don’t even know why I asked, your love of the colour red should be studied. I’ve never met someone with such a deep connection to a colour. I’m a bit envious of how well you know yourself sometimes. I know I shouldn’t be, but fuck do I think you’re cool.”

When you’ve been around for centuries, watching empires rise and fall, you learn exactly who you are.

She rolls onto her side to face me. I copy her so we’re face-to-face, close enough that I can see every single detail in her blood-red eyes and the thin swirls of blue that try to fight to stay prominent.

She’s still young in terms of an eternal life and hasn’t yet shed all the pieces of her humanity.

I squint at her. “Ask me then.”

“Ask you what? I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispers.

It’s so soft that no other vampire in the vicinity would hear her unless they were as close as I am. I raise a brow in question but sigh when she stares blankly at me, pretending she doesn’t know exactly what I’m talking about.

“About Nicolai , the agent’s partner. You have a thing for him so you might as well come out with it.” I waggle my eyebrows at her suggestively, earning another cackle before she slaps her hand over my mouth and hers.

“Shh! Keep your voice down, will you. Besides, I don’t have a thing for him. I’m curious is all, it’s irrelevant that he’s super fucking hot. Stupidly hot.”

I give her an incredulous look whilst she forces an innocent one onto hers, it lasts all of thirty seconds before we’re both rolling around laughing, tears falling from our eyes as we clutch our stomachs.

“I fucking love you, Sunny.”

“I love you too, V.”

We grin at each other until my cheeks hurt. She’ll crack soon, and I wait patiently to be proven right. It only takes a minute or so for the truth to spill out of her in a rush.

“Fine! I do have a thing for him, there, I said it! How can someone pull off a blond wavy mohawk like that and still look like he’s a model? I can’t stop thinking about him since we did our initial stakeout, so next time, I’m coming with you.” She whisper-shouts her confession.

“See? It’s so much better when we’re honest with each other, and as for you coming with me, it’s a no, it’s too risky.”

“But—”

“Not yet, Sunny. Let me see how they respond to the information I dropped and, if they act on it like I think they will, then you can come with me.”

She mulls my response over before nodding her head at me. “Deal.”

I hear the footsteps long before the knock on the door comes and I sigh as this little reprieve I have is over. Time to get back to running my empire, no rest for the wicked as the humans like to say.

Little do they know how much of a true statement that is.

I rise from the comfortable cushions and turn to Sunny; she’ll need more time to let the blood rush dissipate. Being a younger vampire, it takes her longer to come down from the high and I can tell by the dreamy glaze of her eyes she’s still thinking about the six-foot-one, mohawk-donning agent.

“I’ll give you and your imagination of lover boy some alone time, I’ve got to get back to work. Have fun, Sunny.”

I give her a wave and head over to where I kicked my shoes off, my feet sinking into the plump garnet cushions and carpet of the lounge as I go. I slip the killer red heels on while smoothing down my grey pantsuit, slipping my blazer back on as I make my way toward the arched doors.

My subordinates know better than to knock more than once, especially when I am in this room.

The last time one of them decided to ignore that rule, the cocky and cruel man, who had hid that side of him well, was hung upside down as I used a magnifying glass to burn holes into him until he was nothing but a pile of dust that I had one of the cleaners vacuum up.

I smile to myself at the memory—it was fun bending the light to my will and inflicting pain. Whilst sunlight doesn’t make us vampires instantly perish like they show in the movies, it does sting. Concentrate that light in its purest form, and you have a deadly weapon to our kind.