The cello case leaned against the bar stool, its black surface scuffed from years of being dragged across stages and subway platforms. Inside, the instrument hummed faintly—not with music, but with the residual warmth of Lena’s thighs after a three-hour rehearsal. She spun the stool slowly, her bow calloused fingers tapping an absent rhythm against the chipped varnish of the bar. Gin burned the back of her throat, but she welcomed it; alcohol always made the strings feel softer against her skin later. She no longer suffered men who asked her to play at parties—not after the incident with the champagne flute—but tonight was different—she was going to maim the fool that made her homeless years ago—tonight he would become castrato mutilated patron saint. She was Vampire.
The bartender slid another drink toward her without asking. Lena caught the glass mid-slide, her wrist flexing with the same controlled precision she used to draw the bow across the A string. Outside, a streetlamp flickered. Shadows licked at the smudged window like tongues testing the skin of a lover’s back—testing, always testing—how much pressure before she snapped. A voice cut through the jazz humming from the speakers: “That seat taken?”
She knew him instantly. The way his cuff links caught the light—those same goddamn cuff links he’d worn when he’d evicted her from the loft above the old concert hall. His scent flooded her nostrils: bergamot and betrayal. Blood rushed in her ears, a private symphony of arteries tightening. Her fingertips tingled where they pressed against the chilled glass, imagining the give of his trachea beneath them and pissing down his throat as she squatted to his face.
The bowstring scars along her inner thighs itched beneath her skirt—old wounds from nights spent playing until her fingers bled, until the blood made the strings sticky. His slow smile revealed a fleck of parsley between his front teeth. How human. How fragile. She could map every vein in his neck from memory, had traced them in her mind during those first hungry winters underground.
“That depends,” she said, rolling the glass between her palms until condensation dripped onto her knees. The ice clinked like a metronome counting down. “You still enjoy Brahms?” His left eyebrow twitched—almost imperceptibly—but she caught it. Caught the way his pulse jumped when she tilted her head, exposing the faded bite marks along her collarbone. The scars he’d never seen, the ones she’d earned after the eviction, when the hunger had been a live wire in her gut.
To be continued…
