Rory's Mask [Fiction]

The clock struck midnight. The party was going smoothly as expected. The waiters moved smartly, serving finger foods and topping wine glasses. The chitchats gradually morphed into light laughs and dazed looks between guests.

Rory walked down the stairs in a glittering, fitted red dress. Her matching red nail polish and lipstick completed her alluring look. She smiled at a guest and patted his shoulder before taking a glass of wine from a passing waiter.

Tonight, the mask was off. Or would be once her guests were properly inebriated.

It was a party after all until a little commotion got everyone's attention. Rory gasped softly, her well-manicured fingers placed on her lips.

"No! Let me through, please. I know she'll want to see me….ugh, Rory! Rory, please!" A male voice screamed from the door as two men in black suits barred him from passing through. One of them turned and arched a brow at her. She glanced around the party room, all eyes were on her.

That wasn't good. Rory shook her head at her security men and smiled at her guests at the same time. "Why's no one dancing? No distraction, please. Let's drink and dance." She waved to the dance floor. A couple came forward and began to dance.

Rory turned to escape into a room connected to the party hall when the distressed man broke through the security and ran towards her. The men in suits ran after him.

He caught up with Rory and grabbed her arms. "Please, Rory. Don't send me away. Ten minutes of your time, ple—." The men in suits grabbed both his arms and lifted him a little into the air. They were going to toss him out like trash.

"Wait," Rory ordered. "Let him go."

The man, young, probably in his mid-twenties, his eyes, red-rimmed and swollen, revealed he'd not slept for days. His skin was pale and tiny hairs sprouted on his chin and upper lip.

"Thank you," he whispered with relief, following Rory through a door leading to the connecting room. Once inside the room, Rory opened another door and a stairway appeared, leading upstairs without any of her guests being the wiser.

She led the dishevelled man into a bedroom, tastefully furnished in red—the curtains, the king-sized, four-poster bed with drapery, the wallpapers, the vintage lamps, the telephone on the desk. It was the red bedroom and he was familiar with it.

He smiled like a demented man. Rory slowly shut the door. In all her existence, she'd never spared anyone who entered her red bedroom but Adam was different. He saw beyond her mask…and started to love her. So they spent a week together before she let him go.

She overestimated his inner strength. Adam was uncontrollably enamoured with her. His pupils were dilated.

It happened once before, centuries ago, when she was just coming into her powers. Romeo almost went mad until her sire twisted the trickle of her essence in him, which she often left behind unconsciously in her bedmates. So Romeo fell 'madly' in love with the first lady he laid eyes on. Juliet.

And her friend, Shakespeare, of course, made good money from the drama after Romeo's tragic demise.

It seemed Adam was not immune like she'd hoped.

She drew close and he trembled in excitement. A slight push with the tip of her finger sent him falling on the bed. He chuckled. She hoisted up her dress and climbed on top of him.

Adam turned his head to the side, offering up his pale neck. He fisted the red silk bed sheets tightly, in anticipation.

Rory's heart grew heavy. "Never again," she whispered, her lips slightly parted as her fangs slowly jut out. His body jerked on the soft bed as she sank her fangs into his neck. Adam moaned. A few minutes later, his hands released the bed sheets and fell limply to the side of the bed. He stopped breathing.

Rory got up and wiped her lips with a handkerchief. She straightened her dress and left the room to join her guest, her mask of a gentle, reputable woman in place.

The humans would never know.

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