Corazon.

Sophia could feel him struggling underneath her. It didn’t take too long for her to find her next meal; all she had to do was park herself by a road, pop her bonnet and look feminine and flustered. The next sucker who drove by was going to be shown what a real sucker looked like. Through ruby lips, she smiled. Struggling meant they could still feel pain, and she wanted him to. This man was especially bad – he was a rapist, and a sexist pig.

At first, only innocents had stopped for her. She had to Influence them to keep on driving. Then he showed up – a thirty something year old named Greg, who was on his way home from work a couple towns over. He was tall, and was meant to be wiry, but his midsection housed a lot of pounds, that no doubt had been there for quite some time. He wore a crumpled brown suit, and chunky black shoes, his hair slicked back and clinging to the back of his head. Greg was an insurance consultant, and his company was looking for a new assistant. At first, he joked about how the job might be cursed – since all the assistants seemed to be quitting, and never really lasted more than a month or two, but Sophia could feel a small, wry smile in his thoughts as he spoke to her.

“You interested in the job? You look like you’d suit it well,” He nodded, sweeping an appreciative glance over her figure, lingering too long on her womanly attributes.

’You bastard’ She wanted to say. He met her gaze unabashedly, and made no effort to hide that he was looking her over. She didn’t even want to drink his blood, she was so repulsed by his mind that all she wanted to do was peel every single muscle from his bones and hear him beg for her to stop. He was imagining bending her over his work desk after hours, and doing awful things to her that he’d done to every other woman who dared take up the front-desk job in the last year. His father was the head of the company, and he threatened to tell his father that they propositioned him first. Nobody would ever believe the new secretary over the boss’ son.

Greg liked hearing them cry underneath him. He got off on the unwilling, and even as he spoke seemingly innocent words, his thoughts were much too perverted for a sane person. He wasn’t the type of guy who just undressed you with his eyes.

“Well, I don’t really know what’s wrong with my car, it’s new and I’m not used to it at all, but maybe we could go over the manual while we sit down?” She suggested, amazed at how ditzy she had made herself sound. She widened her eyes and pouted her newly glossed lips, and he practically darted into the backseat beside her, shutting the door behind him.

The locks clicked with a definitive zip. He threw her a startled look, meeting her calm, deep brown eyes. “You don’t know what type of people could be roaming around, outside,” She pointed out, and he nodded in concurrence.

“Awful, awful people,” He agreed, glancing behind him. The road was deserted, and it seemed they were the only two around for miles. He stretched out, making use of the space. “And a pretty girl like you should be protected from that.” One of his arms wound around her until his beefy hand lay heavily on her shoulder. Sophia glanced at his thick fingers, smiling sweetly. His mind was blossoming with all sorts of sordid images and scenarios.

Greg smiled back.

The two were smiling for a moment that seemed to stretch on into eternity. Sophia’s eyes had slowly travelled down his stocky neck to his jugular, where she watched the blood pulsing beneath his skin; skin that her razor sharp teeth could easily tear through. One nip and that hot, sweet, viscous liquid would be oozing from a cut; feeding her, sustaining her. As the seconds between them passed, the smile slowly faded from Greg’s face.

‘What...?’ He was thinking, his eyes growing suspiciously large. Sophia only smiled wider – a quick scan of his thoughts, and she knew he was beginning to get scared – the fear and confusion rolling from his body was delicious and sweet, and in abundance. It had finally dawned on him. The natural instincts of predator and prey that had been automatically borne into him had stirred and was warning him now: something was wrong.

He was no longer the predator – he was the prey.

She had expected him to be a runner, but no – he was definitely a popsicle, as she so colourfully called them. Popsicles were the type of victims who became so overwhelmed by their fear that they became frozen.

Sophia resisted the urge to lunge at him and tear into him like an animal – she wanted this to last. “Is there something wrong, Greg?” She asked, cocking her head to the side. She had shuffled over, almost closing the distance between them. She could feel him coil at the sight of her up close – now he was certainly sure that her canines were an obscene length, and very, very sharp.

Greg was mute. She could feel his thoughts faltering, as if someone had pushed the pause button on his brain, and was now suspended in that one particular moment of consciousness. He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. His hand on her shoulder began to tremble. If she tried, she knew she could make him cry.

Slowly, she drew towards him, her brown eyes locked on his blue eyes. He sat still as she paused at his neck, tracing up and down the length of it with her pale, thin fingers. A bead of sweat trickled from his hairline. A hand moving with inhuman speed shot out to smooth over the thin line of wetness. Before he could blink, that hand was poised in front of her soft, pink mouth, her expression appreciative as she examined the slightly glistening end of her finger.

“You’re scared,” She frowned with mock sadness, staring deep into his eyes. “I bet that’s how Clarissa felt... Or maybe even Susan. She didn’t cry, though, and that annoyed you, didn’t it?”

Greg stared at her. His mouth was open, but no words came out.

“You had to teach her a lesson,” Sophia continued in a steely voice; her jaw had become stubbornly set.

“Because women like that need to be taught their place. If she couldn’t react to you, the fine male specimen you are,” She sneered, “then she didn’t deserve to be a woman... You cut her as if she were just so much meat.”

Sophia fought the urge to shiver, balling her hands into tiny fists at her side. Images were flashing through her mind; Greg was projecting so loudly that at one point, their minds were one. She shut herself off, slinking back to the quiet confines of her head. She had reached her killing zone – where there was no room for sentimentality, or softness. This was her dark side, her biggest vice, and she welcomed it, coaxing it to the surface when it had been repressed for so long; like a caged animal waiting to get out.

“I’ve been waiting for someone like you,” She smirked, feeling the bloodlust rear back before it would hit her like a tidal wave. “I wonder if you’ll cry for me.”

The tip of her pink tongue darted out, and slowly trailed along the sweet pulsing of his neck. A strangled cry escaped from Greg’s lips; his mind was slowly working itself back into consciousness. This was his body’s last defence, its last ditch attempt at saving his life.

“P-p-please,” He stuttered. “Don’t kill me.”

“Oh, Greg,” Sophia sighed into the warm skin of his neck. “We’re all dead, really. This is just you getting an early mark; if only you had been a good boy, then perhaps we would not have met this way.”

“Now,” She whispered, breathing in his heady scent. Finally, Sophia let go of whatever remnant of humanity she had left, allowing the fierce animosity that was her bloodlust to take over. A delightful smile spread across her lips as she leaned into him, savouring his fear of her just as much as she would savour his blood.

“Cry for me, Greg.”