DeadlyxNightxShade's Profile at Vampire Rave.

The bartender wiped down the same spot on the counter for the third time, his eyes flicking toward the woman sitting alone in the corner. She hadn’t touched her drink—a glass of something dark that looked like wine but smelled faintly of iron—and she hadn’t spoken to anyone since slipping in just after sundown. Her gloves were black lace, tight enough to show the shape of her fingers, loose enough to hide whatever might lie beneath them.

A man in a too-tight suit sidled up to her table, grinning like he’d already won something. "Haven’t seen you here before," he said, sliding into the seat across from her without invitation. "You waiting for someone?"

The woman—Deadly Nightshade to those who knew what she was, though she hadn’t offered the name—let her gaze linger on the man’s throat before lifting her eyes to meet his. "Actually," she said, her voice a slow, smoky thing, "I was supposed to meet someone. But it seems he’s... lost his way." She traced the rim of her glass with a gloved fingertip, the motion deliberate, idle. "Funny how often that happens."

The man leaned in, scenting vulnerability like a shark catching blood in the water. "His loss," he said, too eager, too pleased with himself. "You shouldn’t drink alone." His fingers twitched toward her untouched glass, but she slid it just out of reach with a subtle tilt of her wrist.

The man’s gaze flickered down to her wrist as she adjusted her glove—just for a second, but long enough to catch the jagged edge of a scar peeking out from beneath the lace. "That’s a nasty mark," he said, reaching without thinking to push the fabric aside. His fingers grazed her skin before she jerked her hand back, her smile tightening into something sharper.

"Occupational hazard," she murmured, swirling the dark liquid in her glass. The bartender had stopped pretending not to watch them. "Back when I had to work for my meals." She let the words hang, heavy with implication, and the man’s grin widened. He thought he’d stumbled onto something sordid, something he could use.

The man's grin turned predatory as he leaned in closer, his breath tinged with whiskey and stale tobacco. "You've got a mouth on you," he said, thumbing the heavy gold ring on his left hand—a serpent swallowing its own tail, the cult's mark. "I like that in a woman. Especially one who knows how to play rough." His fingers tapped against the tabletop, the ouroboros catching the dim bar light like a wink. "How much for the night? Double your usual rate."

Deadly Nightshade let her lashes dip halfway, pretending to consider it. She could feel the bartender's stare burning into her back, the slow shift of his weight as he edged closer—protective instinct or morbid curiosity, she couldn't tell. "Triple," she murmured, tilting her head to expose the pale line of her throat. "I Call it insurance"...

The man’s fingers twitched toward his ring again—a nervous tell, though he’d never admit it. Deadly Nightshade watched the way his pupils dilated, the way his throat bobbed when she named her price. She could already taste the copper tang of his pulse beneath his cheap cologne.

"Triple’s steep," he said, but his voice cracked on the last word. He was already reaching for his wallet, thick with bills he hadn’t earned honestly. "But I’ve got a Hotel room ,two miles down, Van Buren near 42nd street very Private." His grin was all teeth, no charm. "Unless you’d rather do it here against the bar."

The man stood too quickly, knocking his chair back with a scrape that cut through the bar's low hum. Deadly Nightshade watched his fingers tremble as he fumbled for his coat—excitement or withdrawal, she couldn't decide which made him more pathetic. She rose slower, letting her gloves creak as she flexed her fingers just once. The bartender's gaze followed them to the door, his jaw working like he wanted to say something, but the cultist's glare shut him down.

Rain slicked the cobblestones outside, turning the cult's gilded serpent ring into a wet gleam as the man flagged down a cab. Deadly Nightshade counted his mistakes as they climbed in: he sat first, letting her choose the distance between them; he gave the driver his real hotel address; he kept licking his lips when he looked at her throat. The cab smelled of mildew and old cigarettes, the vinyl seat sticking to her thighs through the fishnet stockings she'd worn for exactly this kind of mark.

The hotel room smelled like stale ambition—cheap whiskey, overpriced cologne, and the faint metallic tang of bloodstains someone had tried to scrub out of the carpet. Deadly Nightshade let her fingers trail along the peeling wallpaper as the man fumbled with the key, his breath already coming too fast. His ring glinted under the flickering hallway bulb, the serpent’s eyes catching the light like two tiny, knowing stars.

"Classy," she murmured when he finally got the door open, stepping inside ahead of him just to watch his pupils dilate at the sway of her hips. The bedspread was the color of dried blood, the kind that didn’t come out no matter how many times you washed it. She perched on the edge of the mattress, crossing her legs slow enough to make his throat bob. "You promised me a drink."

The man laughed—too loud, too sharp—as he uncorked the whiskey with his teeth. "Drink first," he said, pouring two fingers into a smudged glass. "Then we'll see how much of that attitude you keep." He slid it toward her, his thumb lingering on the rim where his lips had been moments before. Deadly Nightshade smiled, slow as a blade being unsheathed, and lifted the glass to her mouth without breaking eye contact. The whiskey burned, but she'd swallowed worse for better pay.

"Your turn," she said, nudging the bottle back across the nightstand. The man grinned, tilting his head back as he took a long pull straight from the neck. That was his second mistake—drinking where she could see the flutter of his pulse beneath his jawline. His third mistake was closing his eyes when he swallowed.

The bottle shattered across the man’s temple with a sound like ice cracking underfoot—sharp, sudden, final. Whiskey and blood splattered the wallpaper in a constellation of amber and crimson, and for a heartbeat, he simply stared at her, his mouth slack with shock. Then his knees buckled. Deadly Nightshade caught him by the collar before he could hit the floor, her gloved fingers tightening as she yanked him close enough to smell the fear souring his breath. "You should’ve negotiated better," she whispered, her lips brushing the shell of his ear as he whimpered.

His hands fluttered uselessly at his sides, too slow, too weak—already drowning in the tide of his own blood. She licked a stripe up his throat, savoring the salt and iron, before sinking her fangs into the thrumming artery beneath his jaw. He made a wet, gurgling noise, his fingers scrabbling at her waist, but she rode the convulsions of his body like a lover, her thighs clamping tighter around his hips as she drank. The gold ring gleamed on his twitching hand, the serpent’s tail catching the dim light as if winking at her. She wrenched it free with a twist that snapped his finger.

The ring clattered onto the nightstand, still warm with the man's fading body heat. She held the gold ring up against the light a with metallic glimmer. Seeing her reflection of her eye and a scar below it..just a memory of a past life.to her that Passes through her mind like a electric shock in her brain.

As she twitched and then regains her posture. While putting the gold coin in a green crown royal pouch and tying the string closed then, Deadly Nightshade wipes her mouth with the back of her glove, the lace now stiffening with drying blood.

The room smelled like a slaughterhouse—copper and voided bowels and the acrid tang of spilled whiskey. She stepped over the corpse's outstretched hand, its broken finger curled like a question mark, and threw open the rain-streaked window. Night air rushed in, carrying the distant sounds of the city—honking cabs, laughter from a late-night diner, the hum of neon signs flickering to life. Perfect cover for what came next.

She didn't jump so much as let gravity take her, leaning forward until the ground yawned thirty stories below. The wind ripped at her dress as she fell, but the real transformation began at the halfway point—her body dissolving into a shuddering mass of wings and shadows. Ribs became delicate struts, fingers stretched into membranous sails, her very essence fracturing like a smashed vial of ink. She changed form and shifted into One hundred bats bursting outward in a spiraling cloud, their synchronized flight weaving through the mist like a living shadow flying into the void on the night.

(coven)

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