The laughter was already gathering when Vanessa pushed back her chair and stood.
At first, I thought nothing of it. The club was already alive with noise—music hammering through the speakers, glasses knocking together, neon lights slicing across the packed room.
Then she raised her glass.
The motion drew attention immediately. Silver strobes carved her figure out of the dim room as the amber liquor in her glass trembled against the ice.
A crooked smile spread across her face.
"To Chloe!" she announced, her voice cutting through the music.
Heads began to turn.
One by one.
She raised the glass higher, mischief dancing in her eyes.
"The last fucking virgin standing."
Cheers exploded across the table.
But the sound felt thin.
Too thin to hide the sudden, heavy drop in my stomach.
Heat rushed up my neck, shame prickling across my cheeks and staining them red.
Still, I lifted my martini.
My smile slipped into place, bright and effortless but completely fake. It was a thin, plastic expression stretched across my face, already straining under the weight of their laughter.
Vanessa leaned in, her scent hitting me-peaches and a warm, predatory hint of spice. "Still a saint at twenty-five, Chloe?" she purred, her eyes dancing with a wicked, hungry light. "My, my, how fucking scandalous."
I rolled my eyes, letting the gin burn a trail of liquid fire down my throat. "I'm not saving myself for a ring, Van. I just haven't found anyone worth the effort."
"The 'right guy'?" Ryan scoffed, his words slurring as he hoisted a shot of tequila. "To hell with the right guy. What you need is a good, hard, mindless fuck to loosen those hinges."
Vanessa's hand crept up my thigh, her fingers tracing lazy circles on my skin. "What do you say, Chloe? Want me to introduce you to someone who can make all your filthy, repressed little fantasies come true?"
I bit my lip, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. A part of me—the part that felt the skin-tight dress clinging to my curves like a second, desperate skin—wanted to scream yes. But a deeper instinct hesitated at the precipice of the unknown.
Vanessa seemed to sense my indecision and leaned back, a wicked smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
"Come on, Chloe," she purred. "Don't be shy. I want to hear all the dirty, filthy things you've been dreaming about. What are you into? Do you like being tied up and teased until you're begging for release? Or maybe you're more of a spank me daddy type, getting off on being dominated and controlled. Perhaps you have a secret fantasy about being taken by two men at once, their hands and mouths and cocks everywhere, leaving you thoroughly and completely used."
My breath hitched, the air in the bar suddenly too thick to swallow. "I... I appreciate the offer, Van, but I think I'll sit this one out. I'm not really in the mood for that kind of chaos tonight."
"Boring!" Megan groaned, slumping back. "Chloe, for fuck's sake, live a little! Tonight is the night, I can feel it in my bones."
Laughter erupted again, a blur of noise that felt increasingly distant. I tugged at my hem as it inched up, exposing a dangerous amount of skin.
"Leave it, Chloe," Vanessa grinned, her fingers brushing the hem as she adjusted it with a proprietary touch. "You look hot as hell. Own it."
I rolled my eyes, but despite myself, a chuckle escaped. The conversation had taken a decidedly racy turn, with each of my friends eagerly sharing the intimate details of their love lives.
Ryan grinned, his eyes glazed over with the blissful haze of a man who'd just gotten lucky. "Dan and I are talking about moving in together," he announced, a note of pride in his voice. "It's getting serious, you know?"
Megan giggled, batting her eyelashes coquettishly. "Well, I certainly hope so. You two have been inseparable lately."
Vanessa leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with intrigue. "And what about you, Megan? I hear there's a new man in your life. Spill the beans woman!"
Megan blushed, ducking her head coyly. "Oh, Vanessa, you're such a tease! I'll have you know that my love life is none of your business."
Megan hesitated for a moment before relenting with a sigh. "Alright, fine. But you have to promise not to judge me!"
"Cross my heart and hope to die," Vanessa said, mimicking the gesture with a wicked grin.
Megan leaned in close, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Well, there's this guy at work. He's in accounting, and he's got these amazing eyes...God"
"We've been on a few dates now, and he's just... wow. Really funny, super smart, and so easy to talk to. I feel like I could tell him anything."
Vanessa's eyes widened with excitement. "Ooh, I love a man who can make you laugh! What happened on your last date? Did he make a move?"
Megan's blush deepened, and she ducked her head shyly. "Well, we may have shared a kiss after dinner... and it was really nice. Like, really, really nice."
Vanessa squealed with delight, clapping her hands together "Oh, it bet it was. And I bet you can't wait to get him into bed, can you?
Megan gasped in mock outrage, throwing a dinner roll at Vanessa's head. "Vanessa! You whore!"
Vanessa caught the roll and took a dramatic bite, chewing slowly before swallowing. "Guilty as charged, darling. But come on, don't pretend you don't want to ride that sexy accountant like a pony. "
I couldn't help but chuckle at their antics, even as a twinge of envy tugged at my heart. It was clear that my friends were all in various states of sexual bliss, while I remained the perpetual wallflower, forever on the sidelines.
Suddenly, the loud sound of a whoop cut through the chatter, followed by a flurry of movement. Vanessa had jumped onto the table, her heels clicking against the wood as she swayed with the music.
"Dance! It's Chloe's goddamn birthday!" she shrieked, and the crowd roared back in approval.
Ryan grinned, lifting his glass in mock solemnity. "To that!" he declared, clinking it against hers.
Her energy was contagious, and before I even realized it, my feet were moving. I rose from my chair, letting the music take over, my hips swaying, arms lifting, losing myself in the rhythm. Ryan and Megan were clapping along to the beat, egging each other on with exaggerated moves.
My eyes landed across the room.
He was standing by the bar.
He stood like a flaw in reality, a tear in the fabric of the night. Tall, severe, draped in a tailored black coat that drank the light. His face was all sharp angles and shadow, hair falling like ink over a brow that held eons in its line. But it wasn't his beauty that froze my blood.
It was the silence around him. An absolute void that swallowed all sound and presence.
When his gaze finally impaled mine, the club collapsed into a kaleidoscopic wreck. The rhythmic throb of the bass curdled into white noise, and the swarming faces of the crowd bled into meaningless smears of neon. My heart hammered against my ribs like a frantic bird, but the sensation wasn't terror. It was a violent, soul-deep recognition.
Come to me, Chloe.
My body betrayed me before my mind could even process the word no. I took a step, then another, wading through air that had suddenly thickened into a gelatinous hum of static, as if reality were a failing engine resisting my every move.
"Chloe, what the fuck? Where are you going?" Megan's voice drifted toward me, thin and tinny, as if she were shouting from the bottom of a well a thousand miles deep.
Vanessa's drunken cheer cut through the haze, oblivious and shrill. "Get it, bitch! He's god-tier hot!"
"Don't forget the condoms!"
Their words barely registered. They belonged to another life—one of noise and mornings-after. I was being pulled somewhere else, into the gravity of something old and waiting. I knew him. Not from memory or imagination, but from a place beyond both, from a future my soul already recognized.
I was almost there.
Come to me.
When I reached him, I tried to speak. I wanted his name, wanted anything to anchor him to reality—but my voice deserted me. He said nothing either. He didn't even blink. His gaze held mine with a terrible patience, and in that unbroken stare I caught it: a brief, wrong flicker, like something peering out from behind his eyes.
He turned away.
I followed.
We walked in silence, the world around me blurring even more. The club's bright lights dimmed, the street outside almost eerily quiet. The night air felt too still, the wind barely moving. And that's when I noticed-it was as if the streets were emptying, the people dissolving into nothingness.
I glanced at him again, and my stomach twisted. His form was shifting, warping. His shoulders broadened, his posture twisting unnaturally, like he was shedding some illusion, revealing something else beneath. His skin rippled, his once-perfect features distorting, as if the world around him was bending to his will.
My pulse quickened, panic clawing at my throat. "What...are you?"
But he didn't respond, didn't even falter. His eyes bled a sinister red, pulsing with a silent, ancient rage beneath the flickering street light. His lips curled into a smile that wasn't a smile at all.
My breath caught in my throat, and instinctively, I took a step back. But it was already too late.
He was in front of me, faster than humanly possible. Taller now, monstrous, his skin looked like someone had sculpted it from cracked stone. And those claws-long, dark, jagged things- knives carved by bad intentions.
I gasped for air, but it was as if the very atmosphere was closing in on me. The streetlights flickered violently, casting long, unnatural shadows that seemed to writhe. My heart pounded in my chest as fear began to overwhelm me, drowning out everything else.
No. No, no, no...
I turned to run, but the ground beneath me began to disintegrate, as though the earth itself was giving way. I tried to move, but my legs wouldn't obey.
Then his cold, merciless clamp of a hand latched around my wrist and dragged me toward him. It didn't just touch me; it breached me, slipping past flesh and sanity like it had every right to be there.
My mind cracked open. An endless whisper unfurled inside my skull, peeling apart the seams of who I thought I was. Memories knotted themselves into nightmares. My fears giggled. My desires twisted into shapes I refused to claim.
And through it all, I screamed-except the sound didn't quite belong to me anymore. It came from a body I was rapidly becoming a tenant in, not the owner.
Flashes of calamity struck my mind with surgical precision: mountains splitting, oceans boiling into steam that choked entire continents, and forests ablaze with shadows that whispered secrets I could barely comprehend. Every scream, every crack of splintering earth, every cry of the fallen seemed to echo inside my skull, vibrating my very soul...
...after which there was nothing.
The world went dark. Entirely, impossibly dark. The city sounds-the hum of distant traffic, the murmur of life-vanished. There was only silence, thick and absolute. I was weightless, drifting in an abyss where time and space didn't exist.
There was only him.
Cold. Unyielding. Powerful.