A Dance at Midnight

The house was quiet. If Senar strained her ears, she could hear the steady breathing of her guests in daysleep or the rustle of silk sheets against skin, but she didn’t - she didn’t want to. Besides, it wasn’t like her hearing was what it used to be.

The bed beckoned her, but she walked past it toward the French doors. She flung them open; the sun shined through and basked her in brilliant white-gold light.

One of the positives about being bloodwoken was that sunlight no longer affected her. It made sense: her vampiric powers were waning, so sunlight - and its deadly effects - no longer had any power over her.

Senar hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the sun until she, after growing near insane from being inside the house with the curtains drawn all day, decided she couldn’t do it anymore.

She had expected to crisp up and turn into ash the second the sun hit her skin. On that fateful day in 1991, death seemed like a better alternative than the hell she was living in. Not to mention, she was already dying anyway so speeding up the process sounded like the best idea she had in her miserable, bloodsucking existence.

To her utter shock, when she stepped out on this very veranda, under a sky of part clouds and part sun, her skin only turned red and peeled.

Her confidence was modest, but the flame was fanned. Soon, she stepped out for longer periods of time; her skin continued to turn red and peel, but she didn’t dissolve into ash. Was she disappointed that death was still a prospect rather than a reality? Most definitely. But, for the first time since she became bloodwoken, she experienced something akin to joy.

As the months and years passed, she gradually increased her tolerance until, one afternoon at the turn of the century, she sat in the full morning sun - when every other vampire was in the thick of daysleep - and her skin remained smooth, supple, and unblemished.

Obviously, that meant that her bloodwake was getting stronger, but she hadn’t cared: after nearly three centuries, she could finally enjoy the sun again.

She could finally feel like a human again - just a little bit.

For Senar, she never wanted to be a vampire. The manner in which she became one was traumatic to say the least: she had been living in Joseon at the time when life was always hard, but people somehow managed to remain optimistic. She had closed up her restaurant and was heading home, to her husband and child, when a figure had grabbed her and sunk his fingers and fangs into the softest part of her neck.

She had awoken later that night with a throbbing, blood-crusted neck and a hunger unlike anything she’d known. She ate all the food stored in the large onggi pots - all that precious food for the restaurant - but she was still hungry.

Then, she saw the dead mouse. It had been run over by a wagon’s wheels, and its own blood smeared it across the dirt road.

It was the most decadent thing she had ever smelled.

She ate the mouse, slurped up the congealed blood as if it were water offered by a god.

Thinking about the memory never failed to make Senar’s head hurt. Even now, after she’d been a vampire for centuries, she didn’t like thinking about it.

Even now, she didn’t like being a vampire.

Frankly, what was there to like? The dark was suffocating, the view of the night never changed, other vampires were rivals, not friends, and, worst of all, your family - your husband and your daughter - and your friends were all long dead.

All the perks of being a vampire - super strength, super speed, heightened hearing, night vision, and immortality - were mere distractions from a vampire’s abysmal, repetitive, and overall cruel existence.

Senar stayed still, listening for any signs of her guests lurking nearby. She always had exceptional hearing, so the bloodwake had yet to take that away from her. Sensing no one near, she stepped out onto the balcony. There were a table and chairs just a foot away, but she stood for now, basking in the early morning sun. The air smelled fresh, evident of the coming summer, and birdsong trilled in the distance.

There were nothing but open fields and a copse to the west, but the vivid green of them both lit up in golden glory against a clear blue sky was a sight to behold.

She went over to the chairs and sat. She listened to the birds chitter at each other and the susurration of the leaves bristling in the breeze. Somewhere beyond the house, on the lone paved road, cars cruised down the street.

If only the Masters and Mistresses could see her now. If only Maggie - yes, Margaret Alder, they had been friends of a sort - could see her now.

The snobby German heiress was surprisingly open to and tolerant of many things; Senar briefly wondered if this - her sitting in the sun - would be one of those things.

Perhaps, but also perhaps not. This was bloodwake she was dealing with, not some toxic blood she had on a random summer night that would give her a stomachache that would go away after an hour or so.

“Would you like some tea, Senar?” Henry asked, shattering her thoughts. He was in the dark shade, inside the bedroom; the polished toes of his shoes skimmed the border between shadow and sunlight.

“No, thank you, Henry,” she said. “Could you bring up Mina?”

“Of course, Senar.”

Mina arrived shortly afterward. She bowed low at the waist. “Good morning, Mistress,” she said. “How can I help?”

To Henry, Senar said, “Thank you. You go get some sleep now.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Good day.”

Henry walked away, leaving the two women alone on the balcony. Mina wore her usual uniform, a black tunic and matching pants both made of thick cotton. Her auburn hair was tied back in a tight ponytail.

Once she was sure Henry had left the floor, Senar turned to Mina. She said, “I’ll be going out for a little while, and I need you to hold down the fort.”

Mina’s eyes, the color of the sky, rounded. “Me?”

Senar gave her a small smile. “Yes. You. Can you do that for me?”

The maid seemed speechless, her mouth slightly parted and her eyes unblinking. However, after a moment, she recovered and bowed low once more. “Of course, Mistress. I won’t let you down,” she said.

“Good,” Senar said, standing up. The blood flowed back to her legs, and her back cracked. “Now, help me pick out what to wear.”

The house was quiet but not because everyone inside it was sleeping. It was quiet because everyone who lived in it had either gone to school or work.

Senar knew that the house had security cameras installed along the outside perimeter. She also knew that she was expected today because she told him she would stop by.

She had met Dr. Morrow in person only once, many years ago; since then, they corresponded via letters. As a famed hematopathologist, he had been keen on helping her after learning of her condition. Both conditions.

Every third Monday of the month, he would send her blood but not just any blood. Special blood, whether it was lab-created or genetically mutated. Anything to combat the effects of bloodwake.

So far, no concoction has been successful.

Senar didn’t have to actually walk on the premises: the package was inside the mailbox way out past the winding driveway. Still, she paused, her eyes and ears open for any passersby who might confront the strange woman in front of their neighbor’s mailbox.

Usually, Dr. Morrow came to her, and Henry would bring up the blood.

However, with the Bleeding Ball so near and a home full of vampires, Senar had to be even more careful. She couldn’t risk an unfamiliar car - driven by a human, no less - to come up to the house where vampires, with senses better than hers, could sniff him out in seconds. She didn’t want to imagine what would happen after.

No, it was better that she made the trek this time. Yes, she could get caught, but she made sure nobody followed her, and she trusted Mina. And, most importantly, she was Senar Kil: if any vampire could daywalk unscathed and undetected, it was her.

Fortunately, the street behind her was empty, devoid of both cars and humans. A bird called out in a nearby tree, its squawk like a warning in her ear.

She pulled open the mailbox lid. Inside was a bubble envelope. It was light. She ripped open the flap on the top. A vial of blood lay inside. Nothing more, nothing less.

Cold relief flooded her system. She closed the envelope and clutched it in her hand. Scanning the street one last time, she left.

Senar held the vial up to the light. The blood didn’t look any different from regular blood. According to Dr. Morrow’s letter, though, this blood had been genetically spliced; he then went on to explain exactly what and how it was spliced, but she hadn’t read the rest: she hadn’t asked him to write an essay, she just wanted the blood.

She sat on the vanity, her back rod-straight. In front of her was Dr. Morrow’s letter and the vial of blood. She glanced at the door: the lock had been turned. Outside, the house continued to be quiet, the vampires still in daysleep.

The sunlight streaming through the open French doors warmed the left side of her body. The warmth bolstered her; she didn’t understand how any vampire could live as long as they did without feeling the sun against their skin. Then again, daysleep was a powerful thing, an entity in its own right that rendered vampires nothing more than limp vegetables - you never missed what you couldn’t experience.

Focus.

She turned her attention back to the vial. It was the size and length of her forefinger. She popped open the plastic stopper. It fell and rolled on the rug, forgotten.

She brought the open vial up to her nose. It smelled like...blood. Metallic and a little sour.

Without another thought, Senar downed the blood, and, for a flash of a second, the memory of the blood she had drunk last night popped in her mind’s eye.

Unlike yesterday’s blood, though, she swallowed this blood easily. It was slightly less viscous than human blood and, though it smelled bloody, it didn’t taste quite as such.

She let out a ragged breath. She closed her eyes and waited.

Nothing happened.

She waited some more.

Nothing.

She tapped her knee. She rolled back her shoulders. Perhaps she should’ve read what Dr. Morrow wrote: he might have talked about how long the effects would take to appear.

Minutes passed.

She opened her eyes. She glanced down at her palms and met her eyes through the mirror.

She felt and looked the same.

She peered over at the empty vial. The very bottom of the glass held a tiny droplet of blood that had pooled from the sides.

I need to drink all of it.

Senar grabbed the vial and upturned it into her mouth. She held it there until that final drop crept onto her tongue. She swallowed. She set the vial back down on the vanity.

She waited.

But as ten, thirty, seventy minutes passed, her reflection stayed the same. Her senses stayed the same. Disappointment unfurled in her gut along with anger.

In fact, it boiled up within her, and without a second thought, she grabbed the empty vial of glass and threw it against the mirror. The mirror cracked, and the glass of the vial shattered into a hundred tiny pieces.

Abruptly, she stood up; the chair toppled to the ground, but she barely heard it. She wanted to scream - the scream was right there, on the tip of her tongue, she just had to open her mouth - but she couldn’t. If she did, her guests would wake up, and she might as well have asked them to kill her.

She curled her fists until the bones in her knuckles popped; pain, sharp and stinging, radiated up her wrists.

I need to walk.

It was still morning. Later in the morning, but she still had hours before anyone would even think of opening their eyes.

A walk, yes, that was exactly what she needed. Outside, too, far away from the house, she could scream.

The urge to leave again threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted the sun and wind against her face; she wanted nothing but the sounds of leaves and cars and birds in her ears. She wanted to see the green and the blue of nature, uncorrupted from forces outside of her control.

She. Needed. To. Leave.

Senar crossed the room in three strides. She tried to unlock the door, but her hands shook so they slipped off the knob. She clenched them to steady them and tried again. The lock clicked. She grabbed it and swung open the door...

...and came face to face with Adrian Namgung.