Seneca Mahon was bored. Dinner was taking too long. Chip was talking but she didn’t hear what he was saying. Didn’t care what he was saying. She just wanted to leave, to feed on him, then go home. Alone.

But…that wouldn’t be nice. He took her on a date, took her to dinner. She owed it to him, to be nice. Especially since he was so nice to her all the time. Actually, it made her a little uncomfortable how nice he was. He was always so upbeat and kind. How was he so friendly and peppy, to everyone, like all the time? She couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure him out.

She felt just a tiny bad to feel this way, but she didn’t really care to figure him out. Chip was handsome in a high school football player kind of way, tall and strong without an ounce of fat anywhere on his body. He had this amazing washboard stomach that was perfect. She really liked his abs. She would miss those abs. And…while his blood was tasty, she had been thinking about ignoring his calls after tonight. One last taste, then she would cut him off. He was so sensitive, though, and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He really was a nice, if clingy, kind of guy. Someone who would make the right woman very happy and secure.

She knew intimately that she was not that woman.

Tingling on her neck, as if someone was watching her, distracted her further from whatever Chip was rambling about. She ignored it, returning to her line of thought.

He wasn’t a Wren so there was that, too. It was time for her to throw in the towel, even if he did look like a professional athlete. This had always been something temporary for her. She wondered if she had made a mistake, sticking with him for this long. But…those abs…

She picked at her linguini, poking it with her fork. Shit, she thought angrily at herself, when did I get so…selfish? Heartless?

The tingling grew to something more like pins and needles and she looked around the restaurant before she could stop herself. No one seemed to be looking at her, everyone engaged in their own little islands of conversation around them. She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to shake the feeling of being watched, but it lingered on.

“Babe?” Chip asked, his boyish features marred with concern. Concern for her, while she was ignoring him, plotting her breakup with him. Her heart twisted as she questioned her conscience. “You okay?”

She forced herself back in the moment, guilt pooling in the bottom of her stomach like bile. “Yeah, sorry. Just got a lot on my mind. What were you saying?” She would be nice, even if she had to force herself. She wasn’t heartless, she wasn’t. Now she just had to prove it to herself.

“You haven’t touched your food, just pushed it around. You aren’t hungry?” he asked her, glancing at her nearly full plate of pasta and shrimp.

“Ah, yeah. I guess I’m just not that hungry right now,” she said weakly. Actually she was starving, but not for food. She was more than anxious for the meal that flowed beneath Chip’s tan skin. Her last, she reassured herself.

She looked over at Chip’s plate, which was completely empty with only smears of sauce left, then down at her own, full of delicious looking pink shrimp and pasta covered in a pale garlic sauce. But…she just wasn’t hungry, not for pasta and seafood. She wanted blood, and then she wanted to go home. She had to work tomorrow.

Seneca wanted to dine and dash. The realization made her feel even more guilt, all of it sloshing around uncomfortably in her belly.

But…Chip was so much work, so needy and clingy. She felt suffocated. Her guilt worked to fill her from the bottom of her torso and his neediness began to fill the top. He looked at her expectantly, his handsome face genuinely worried for her. It was too much, she was too full of emotions, all of them bad. She needed to go, needed to get out now.

“I, Chip, it’s,” she began. His face fell and she felt so guilty that she couldn’t even make up a good excuse to leave. She knew she couldn’t leave, either, because she hadn’t fed in days. She needed her last meal to tide her over until she found another compatible partner.

He looked like she had kicked a puppy in front of him, his face all crestfallen. “Are you not having a good time?” he asked her forlornly.

Shit. He was good at making her feel bad about herself. “No, no!” she exclaimed a little too loudly. “I just have a lot going on at work right now, making me distracted,” she lied, feeling even worse about it. There was no way he was going to buy that excuse. It was thin and lame and she was kicking herself that she couldn’t have come up with a better one.

He smiled easily, taking the bait hook, line and sinker. “Oh, I know. Your job sounds real stressful sometimes. Well, I have just the thing, a surprise. Something to take your mind from your worries,” he said jubilantly.

Her stomach fell. Something in his posture, in his smile, had her on edge. He was going to do something stupid, she could just feel it. Things seemed to start happening around her, but she was helpless to do anything as she sat in shock at what happened next.

Chip stood up with his glass and a butter knife in hand. He rapped the knife on the glass three times. The sound somehow echoed loudly in the small Italian restaurant. “Excuse me,” he called out loudly to the nearby patrons. “May I please have your attention for a moment?”

She wanted to sink into the floor. Why was everyone looking? Why didn’t they ignore him like regular people? Everyone was watching them now. Even the servers had stopped, all eyes were on them. She felt the pins and needles on her neck again, even more clearly. The room full of stranger’s eyes on them was a pressure that was almost unbearable. Chip smiled gallantly, totally enjoying the attention. He craved this kind of attention. She tried to scrunch down into her seat as he sunk to one knee, pulling something from his back pocket. Something black and palm sized. Something box-shaped and covered in velvet.

If vampires threw up, she would have been spewing the glass of wine and two bites of pasta she had eaten right now from shame and embarrassment.

“Seneca Mahon,” he said regally, opening the box and exposing a gold ring with a huge diamond affixed to it. “Will you marry me?”

He had just taken it too far. She couldn’t say no, not now, not with everyone watching. Not with that tingling, uncomfortable feeling on the back of her neck. She gulped, feeling like all the air had left the room. She picked up her wineglass and chugged the rest of the contents, then looked at it as if it had betrayed her, too, by being empty. Everyone watched her, so many eyes, all expectant. She couldn’t say no, she would look so cold, so heartless. She wasn’t heartless, she wasn’t! So…she couldn’t reject him, not before all of these witnesses. They would think she was horrible. Everyone would think she was cruel. She wasn’t cruel, but no one would see it that way. It wasn’t fair.

She opened her mouth to respond to him, but she couldn’t find the words. She couldn’t tell him yes. She couldn’t marry him. Her life flashed before her eyes, married to this peppy, cheerful, perfectly toned man. This boring man. It was the worst. The picket fences, the country club, the rich men and their annoyingly perfect stepford wives. Her eyes widened in horror at her potential future as Mrs. Chip Gibson. She couldn’t marry him. She just couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t be his wife. But all those anticipatory eyes. All of them staring at her, judging her, expecting her to say yes. Demanding it with their stupid demanding eyes.

“This is,” she struggled to say, trying to find a way out of this and failing. The room seemed to be closing in on her and she couldn’t breathe. The tingling was ever steady and she wasn’t sure if she was really feeling it or if it was part of her body’s response to the incredible stress of the situation. It seemed so different than everything else, her mind was forced back to it.

Chip cleared his throat, bringing her attentions back to him. Why was he doing this to her? They had only known each other for like, four months or something. Four months was not enough time to be together for a proposal. “Ah, well,” she mumbled, swaying in her seat. Her face burned with embarrassment and she wished the floor would just open up and swallow her. She wished a jet engine would fall on her from the sky like Donnie Darko.

Instead, everyone watched her, all of those expectant eyes. So many eyes. Too many eyes, too heavy. She was suffocating. It seemed like everyone was holding their breath, too. The room was silent.

“Ah…marry?” she asked dumbly. “You?”

He nodded enthusiastically, a big dumb smile on his big dumb face. It made his dimple stand out.

“Like, right now?” she said, regretting the words as soon as they slid out of her mouth. God, she was stupid. How could she be so dumb? Those words didn’t even make sense! She knew he didn’t mean right now but it’s what fell out when she went to speak. She wanted to disappear. She wanted the building to catch on fire so they had to evacuate. She wanted to turn back time and cancel this date.

Somehow the smile on Chip’s face grew even larger. “Oh, Senny baby, you are so funny. You’re the best, baby!” he exclaimed with a laugh, thrusting the box into her hand and grabbing her into an awkward hug. “We can set the date later! We’re getting married,” he announced jubilantly to their captive crowd.

Everyone in the restaurant applauded warmly. The room closed in, spinning around her as she forgot how to breathe. He kissed her, full on the lips, forcing his way into her mouth and she let him, too much in shock to do anything rational.

Something happened. Things happened around her but she couldn’t grasp them. The feeling on her neck, the tingling of pins and needles, it was so strong. It felt numbing, distracting.

One minute his mouth was over hers in the restaurant, and the next his blood was on her tongue, in her mouth, down her throat. She struggled to open her eyes, heavy as if she had been waking up from a long sleep. Her head was thick and groggy, and she was immediately disoriented.

Chip’s body pressed against her rhythmically. He was inside of her, thrusting vigorously, his perfect abs flexing as he pitched his hips. She tried to push him away, but his weight and her disorientation worked against her. She was still attached to his neck, too, which didn’t help matters any. There was no indication that he even noticed her attempts to dislodge him.

It was dark, where was she? She could only smell him, nothing else. She panicked, realizing she had just lost time. How did she get here? They had been having dinner and she had been planning what she was going to say when she broke up with him and… Oh my god, she thought miserably, remembering the events of the night as he crashed into her over and over again. I’m going to be marrying this jock! Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god…

She pushed herself away from his neck and he grunted, his hips thrusting even faster. He came inside a few pumps later, then sagged down on top of her, blissfully ignorant of her current internal dilemma.

“That was amazing, baby,” he cooed into her ear. She pushed him off of her and he slid out of her wetly.

Too wetly. She sat up and felt his seed gush between the lips of her labia, warm and thick and disgusting. “Chip!” she exclaimed, scooting away from him quickly. “You came inside me! You didn’t wear a condom! What the fuck?”

“I asked you and you didn’t seem to mind,” he said softly. “We are going to get married now anyway, so I figured it was okay. It’s okay, isn’t it?”

She couldn’t see the look on his face, but she knew it from his tone. She had kicked another puppy. But…he came inside her! He didn’t use a condom! It was not okay. Everything was wrong. She had to go home.

Moonlight filtered into the room through the large bay window and she recognized she was in Chip’s flat, a trendy loft apartment downtown. Turning from him, she almost leaped for the edge of the bed as his cum drained down her leg. “No, it’s not…I have to go!” she exclaimed. “I…I have to go home!”

He wore a dazed look of confusion on his rugby features. “You should just stay the night here, with me. We can celebrate some more. I can be ready to go again if you just give me-”

“No!” she practically yelled, cutting him off. “No, we need, I need to go home.” She searched her mind for a reason, any reason, she couldn’t stay here. “Work! I need to go home, I have to work tomorrow.”

She ran from the bed, dressing quickly in the dark. She was almost to the point where she didn’t even care if she had to leave without being dressed properly. She just had to go. Now.

“Senny Baby, you have clothes here. Just wear those,” he said reasonably. “Come back to bed, I know you didn’t come. I really liked that thing you did, the biting…” he said dreamily.

Shit. Tonight was all messed up. She hadn’t spaced him yet. She had to space him. He didn’t know she was vampire. She crawled across the bed, grimacing as another glob of his disgusting discharge bubbled out from inside of her. She forced her eyes to go red and looked directly into his. He smiled hugely, leaning in to kiss her again, thinking she was coming back for him.

“No, Chip, look at me,” she said, putting power into her voice. “I didn’t bite you. We had sex and I had to leave because I have to work tomorrow. I’ll be working late, so don’t call me for a few days, okay?” she said, imprinting the directions and false memories into his mind.

He nodded distractedly. “Oh, yeah, I know you don’t like biting. You didn’t bite me. You have work, of course. I’ll call you in a few days,” he said thickly.

“Okay,” she said, still putting power into her voice. She thought about telling him he didn’t propose to her, but she knew he felt too strongly about it. It wouldn’t work. “Go to sleep now,” she told him instead.

He nodded to her once, then lay down slowly. He was asleep before she found her other shoe. Something glinted on her finger in the moonlight coming in through the window. The ring was somehow on her finger. She wanted to take it off, to throw it onto the bed and run away from him, but she knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Still, she tucked it into her pocket. Out of sight, out of mind. As if it were that simple.

She could change her number, move to a new apartment. Get a new job. Shit…she couldn’t seem to find a rational way to escape from him. Instead, she ran into the night, away from him but not escaping him.

The Game Chapter 2: One Mystery Solved