Soph clung to the edge of the sink as another vision took her. Bailey was crouched in a gloomy building. The floor was dirty, and the sun shone through the window, highlighting the motes suspended in the air. The sunlight would burn Bailey. He had to wait until dark to get home.

The vision cleared and Soph gasped as she watched herself in the mirror. Her eyes darkened from a cloudy white back to green. She hadn't known Bailey was a Psychic. She had assumed he was another Predator, so when she'd drunk his blood in the bathroom of the club she'd met him in, she'd been startled when, instead of being infused with an unquenchable fury, she began experiencing visions. Visions of Bailey.

As she had with the vampire she'd killed, she conned Bailey into letting her drink his blood first. He seemed inexperienced and could see no problem with allowing her to lure him into the bathroom. The moment she'd felt her strength increase, she'd broken his neck. She didn't kill him - would she have experienced futuristic visions about him if she had? - but she found an empty beer bottle and had collected some of his blood to take with her when she'd fled.

The visions had started shortly afterwards and now she was standing in a public bathroom, unable to get them to stop. Her phone buzzed, the sound overly loud to her sensitive ears, and she fumbled to answer it.

"Hello," her voice hoarse.

"Soph? It's Bradley. Where are you? You missed the Trendors meeting!"

Soph pulled her phone away from her ear to look at the time, then groaned. It was almost eleven am. "Sorry, Bradley," she told her boss. "I've got a pounding migraine and lost track of time."

"Not good enough, Soph. Take tomorrow if you need, but we're going to talk about this on Friday."

She hung up and shoved her phone into her pocket. Another vision blinded her. Bailey walked along a dark street, his steps wavering. His hand covered his neck. A bite? Or the cut where Soph had taken his blood? She couldn't tell how far into the future this was.

Despite his lethargy, he managed the length of the street, which ended in a cul-de-sac. He went to a house that had no lights on and knocked on the door. It was answered quickly by a vampire with glowing red eyes.

"About time," he said to Bailey. "Alec's been waiting."

"We have a problem," Bailey said, pushing into the house. The vision faded.

Soph shoved off the sink and staggered out of the bathroom. The sun was glaringly bright, and she shielded her eyes with her arm. It was close to the middle of the day and the service station she was at was busy with people coming and going so she couldn't exactly race out of there at vampire speed. Instead, she went to the main road and hailed a taxi.

Thankfully, she had no more visions of Bailey in the taxi - the switch that turned off the vampire powers seemed to be different from that of the Predator - and she let herself into her apartment with the thankful groan.

She put the bottle of blood in the fridge, noting as she did that she hadn't been shopping in some time, then went to the lounge and slumped down on it.

Lethargy consumed her - an odd feeling to be coupled with the immense strength and heightened senses that she currently possessed - and she considered that it could be because she hadn't slept since Sunday. Or it could be a product of the damned visions. Another one took her.

Bailey was at another house now. It was sparse but homely. A woman leaned on a kitchen bench, her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed.

"You let her drink your blood? Are you fucking cheating on me, Bailey?"

"I'm not, I promise," he begged towards the scorned woman. "I wasn't going to exchange a hit for sex, just for the drink of her blood."

The woman scoffed, turning towards the bench where some half prepared vegetables waited on a board. She picked up a knife and resumed dicing a carrot.

"Babe," Bailey pleaded, moving towards her. "You've got to believe me!"

"Oh I do," she said dryly, "I just can't believe how fucking stupid you were to let her go first."

Bailey took that as forgiveness and crossed to her, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her neck.

"I just wish," the woman whispered, resisting his affections just a little, "that you'd told me. I'm hungry too, you know."

The scene faded, and Soph found herself back on her leather couch. She stared at her broken TV thoughtfully. It was strange to think that the events she was seeing hadn't even taken place yet.

Watching Bailey in the visions made him seem quite human. She wondered, if he'd bitten her first, would he be having these visions about her? She rubbed her face and stood. Perhaps she should try to get some sleep.

***

Soph knew she'd slept too long. She woke feeling brittle, her mind a tempest of pain. She staggered from her bed to the kitchen, noting as she did that it was morning outside. Once more she'd slept half a day and a full night away.

With a shaking hand, she yanked open the fridge and pulled the bottle of blood out. She didn't hesitate in putting it to her lips and chugging it back. Where the blood normally tasted sweet, it was now like swallowing thick vinegar. Soph gagged and only just made it to the sink to vomit. The bottle slipped from her hand and smashed on the floor, spraying blood across the tiles.

When she'd been thoroughly sick, she turned away from the sink and slid down the kitchen cabinet to the floor, staring at the spilled blood, her headache pounding in her temples. She was weak and trembling and she knew, somehow, that she'd left the blood too long, that it'd gone off. She wouldn't be able to save it, as she'd planned, and would have to drink any blood she could get as fresh as possible.

Tears leaked down her cheeks, and hot shame burned within her. What sort of monster had she become? How could she stop this spiral? She wanted to, but the pain was too much and she knew it would kill her. She wiped her mouth with the back of her arm and it came away smeared in blood.

She drew a ragged breath, which exhaled as a sob. At the same time as she let herself descend into misery, she also decided that she would go out to Gryphook that night and find another vampire. She had to keep her head above water at least to get to work tomorrow, and the only way she could do that was with vampire blood.

***

"Soph? Are you listening?"

"Yes," Soph retorted, more bluntly than she intended. Shae and Nathan - the two delegates from Opium Entertainment - glanced at each other. Bradley frowned at her. And not for the first time that day.

Despite going out right on dark, Soph hadn't convinced a vampire - thankfully a Predator this time - to give her blood first until the early hours of the morning. After descending into such a torment with her withdrawals, the blood had been like breathing air after being held under water. She'd embraced the strength and rage wholeheartedly and had killed the vampire, leaving him in the back alley behind a bar with a plank from a transport pallet in his chest. She'd been so late in getting the blood that she'd come straight to work afterwards.

It was now afternoon, and the day had positively dragged. Imbued with so much adrenaline, it had been difficult to sit still all day, impossible not to snap at her team when they'd bothered her with stupid questions. When Bradley had mentioned that she still looked unwell, she'd positively snarled at him. Now she was stuck in this stupid meeting, with a client who wasn't even tier one.

"What I was saying," Bradley continued, turning back to Shae and Nathan and plastering a smile on his face. Soph tried to do the same and was sure she failed. "Is that for the package we're proposing, we can dedicate one Graphic Designer to your account. If you go for a premium package, we can give you two people, one of those being a Brand Consultant."

Soph withdrew from the conversation once more and stared at the doorway of the boardroom. She would have stared out the window, but the sun was debilitating. Her knee jerked impatiently under the table, and it took all her willpower not to drum her fingers on the desk. She needed to get out of here and burn some energy.

After what seemed like a century, the meeting ended and Soph suffered through the niceties of the farewell. She was about to leave the boardroom when Bradley put a hand on her arm, staying her. She had the sudden urge to rip his head off.

"I don't know what's going on, Soph," Bradley said. "I know you've been unwell, but your attitude has been, quite frankly, fucking poor. You need to get your shit together, you hear me? I didn't make you Head of Design so you could go back to being completely unreliable."

"Yes, Bradley," she said through gritted teeth. He released her, and she stalked from the room and back to her desk - thankfully her team had already left for the day - to collect her things before making a beeline for the lift.

She was just about to step onto the street when she saw Eli walk out of the building across the road. She paused before the automatic doors could open and watched him through the glass. He was looking at his phone as he walked to the car park and didn't glance up. A part of Soph wanted to go to him, to run across the street and beg him for blood. She was fairly certain he wouldn't give it to her - he didn't reek of the same desperation that the other vampires did - so she let him leave, not breathing easily until his car roared up the road. She finally stepped out on the street and took a deep breath.

Hands in pockets, she headed towards the train station that would take her out to Gryphook. It was time to go hunting.