Soph stared at herself in the mirror. With the Predator active, her face looked gaunt and sallow and her hair fell lank about it. Dark circles rimmed her eyes, which glowed an ungodly crimson. She forced the Predator away and her eyes faded back to their normal green colour. She still looked sickly, but there was nothing for it. She was already late.

She left the downstairs bathroom of the Paxus building and strode to the lifts. She had to check her pace to ensure she wasn't going too fast; after running the entire way home the night before, it was difficult to maintain a human speed.

She didn't know what had possessed her to come to work today - the commute in the sunlight alone had almost been enough to send her crawling back to her bed - but through her night of turmoil, which involved a bout of sobbing hysterically over the vampire she had killed, and trashing half her apartment - the half that hadn't already been destroyed - in a furious rage at her own lack of self control, she'd decided that she needed to attempt a return to normality as soon as possible. She exited the lift on her office level and went straight to her cubicle, head down. She dropped her bag on her desk and slid into her chair, turning on her computer as she did so.

"Ten o'clock is late, even for you, Soph," Rhonda said from across the partition. She eyed Soph smugly over the rim of her cup of tea.

"Shut up, Rhonda," Soph muttered without looking at the other woman. She tried to focus on her emails, but the brightness of her screen was overwhelming and she wanted to look anywhere else.

"Didn't take long to fall back to old habits," Rhonda murmured as she sipped her tea and turned back to her own work.

"I said fucking shut it!" Soph exploded, slamming her hand flat on her desk. Rhonda reeled back in shock while those working closest to them fell quiet to listen. Breathing heavily as she struggled to keep the Predator from showing, Soph turned away from Rhonda and wrenched open her drawer to search for a notepad and pen.

"Alrighty!" Bradley stepped out of his office, clapping his hands gleefully. "Two weeks until the Sinners grand opening and we have a lot of work to do! We've got the feedback from SinCorp so we need to implement their fresh ideas ASAP! Also, I've got a list of who's coming to the opening. If you didn't make the cut this time, never fear - there is still Sinister to go! Soph," he stopped by her desk and she looked up at him wearily. "Are you feeling better? You look a little off colour."

"I'm getting there," she lied. "I was just going to work on some concepts for the app. I thought maybe a, er, promiscuous notification gets sent to everyone's phones before the club opens, and a Snapchat plug so that people inside can film a few seconds of their night to give a glimpse of what's inside."

"I like it." Bradley nodded along. "If you're going to be this late again though, Soph, you need to call me."

"Sure," she said dully, collecting up her notebook to go and find a dark meeting room to work in. "Sorry, Bradley."

***

The headache was returning already. Soph paced the small corridor space of her apartment, feeling her strength ebb away with each turn. She didn't want to go and find more vampire blood. She'd killed a man, for Founders' sake! Killed him for his blood!

She reached the wall at the end of the room - the same wall Eli had pinned her against the night after Sincere's opening and made her beg for him - and turned, striding back towards the doorway. As she passed the back of the lounge, she ignored the tears in the leather, a product of her outburst the night before, and tried to decide what she should do.

She had promised herself the night before - after she had returned home from killing that vampire - that she wouldn't go out looking for a hit again. She would weather the storm, work through the withdrawals. But now, as she tried to walk off the tension building in the back of her skull, she wondered if there was something else she could do.

As much as she loathed what the woman had done, she considered calling Adriana. The witch obviously had access to enough blood to fuel an army of black witches. Her main concern, though, was that if she took the blood, she'd be indebted to Adriana. The woman was undoubtedly a powerful - and dangerous - witch, and if Soph went begging to her, she may turn her against Eli again.

Oddly, Soph had only received one text after the Friday night in which she had hunted Eli up to Grimshollow Peak. It had been from Sierra on the Sunday morning (though Soph hadn't seen it until earlier that day).

Hey, how are you? It had read. Where did you get to on Friday night?

Soph had deliberated for a while on how to answer. She'd considered Sierra a friend and couldn't deny that it hurt her that Sierra would put her in such a position, whether or not she knew about Adriana's plan. If Sierra knew about the vampire's blood and what it would do to the coven gathered there, had she expected that Soph would run rampant until the Predator was out of her system? Had they banked on her not remembering the night at all and writing it off as too much wine? They certainly wouldn't have anticipated Eli sparing her and pulling her from the red haze of hatred.

I wasn't feeling well, she had eventually responded to Sierra, so I went home. She left it at that. Sierra still hadn't replied.

The other option she'd considered in getting a hit safely, was to find Eli. He was a vampire, he could give her blood. The only problem was that she didn't know how to contact him. She didn't have his phone number, nor did she know where he lived - though she could probably have taken a guess at one of the upper-class suburbs like Hamilton or Aerlie. She also considered trying to bail him up before work in the morning, perhaps waiting out near his car park for him to arrive, but she was concerned that she wouldn't be able to hold out that long, that her strength would wane too far and she would once more be bed ridden.

She diverted from her well-trodden path to veer into the bathroom. She turned on the tap and put her mouth under the faucet, sucking down the water. She was so fucking parched when she was coming down.

The water did little to quench her thirst, and she knew it was because she was thirsting for blood. She disgusted herself. She returned to the corridor, slamming a hand against the wall as she did. A frame with a photo of her and Luie dropped from its hook, smashing against the tiles and spraying shards of glass across the floor. Soph ignored it - she had bigger things to worry about. Her head gave a painful throb, and she wheeled towards the door. She wasn't going to go through the pain of the weekend again. She couldn't bear it.

***

Soph drifted along Cypress Street, hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched. She glanced furtively around, hoping that she looked out of place - frightened to be somewhere she shouldn't. Which was exactly where she was.

Without allowing herself to think along the way, Soph had returned to Gryphook to seek out a vampire to give her blood. Admittedly, she was on the other side of the suburb than she had been the previous night, and she had discovered that Cypress Street was actually the entertainment precinct for vampires.

Bass music thumped from more than one building, and many of the doorways were guarded by shady men in black. None of the vampires on this street bothered to hide their powers, moving like blurs from one spot to another. Soph saw a few fights break out, the fists swinging mighty cracks against bone, all too fast for the human eye to follow.

Soph had no particular destination in mind, though she was starting to think one of the clubs might be a better bet. This street was too busy, and she was cold. Veering right, she stopped before a security guard. She expected him to ask for ID, but he merely looked her up and down and smirked before stepping aside.

She moved past him and to the sweeping staircase beyond, but not before hearing him mutter, "bloodbag," under his breath. It almost made her stop. Almost. But as usual, every time she thought about diverting from her task in getting more vampire blood, painful knives would stab at her brain, forcing her onwards.

She climbed the stairs, allowing the pulse of blood in her ears to match the beat of the music. She paused briefly at a desk to allow her arm to be stamped, then she stepped into the club. An elevated platform snaked its way around a pit of dancing bodies and towards the bar. Soph followed it, eyeing the dancers before stopping at the back-lit bar and ordering a shot of vodka. She threw it back, then slammed the glass down on the counter.

"Easy there," a voice said beside her. She turned slightly to find a man leaning on the bar beside her. He had fair skin and blue eyes and when he smiled at her, his gaze travelled down to her neck where he was no doubt noticing the beat of her heart in the arteries there. He was younger than Soph usually went for, but he would do. She smiled back at him.

"Buy me another?"