He doesn’t have time to decide. Something from the open doorway to his right sends his partner flying down the hall, your body tossed so easily. You skid through the dirt and blood you saw earlier, scratches and scrapes forming before the later bruises you’ll see later.

If there is a later.

Your mouth falls open in a wordless scream as you watch John being pinned against the hallways wall, and just what exactly is pinning him you can’t comprehend.

It looks human.

Or maybe once human.

Faking being human.

But those claws, that distended jaw that opens and leaves trails of spit between razor sharp teeth. The naked, twisted body, bones not where they should be under grey translucent skin.

Oh god.

The eyes.

They’re looking at you now and you realize the screaming finally broke free from your body, guttural and ancient, a primal scream you had no idea would even come out of you. True fear.

John’s struggling under the creatures grip, his hands gripping the oversized claw that threatens his neck, his face red and breaths spitting between gritted teeth as he fights with all his might.

“Run!” He yells as he connects his boot with the torso of the thing, not helping himself, but attempting to give you time to flee.

The thing recovers its attention to John, and you stumble to your feet, fear making you fumble with your handgun, trying to aim in a way that doesn’t hit John.

You fire.

It hits into Its shoulders.

It doesn’t care.

It’s already driving its fangs deep into John’s tender neck.

It’s slurping.

John screams in agony.

You fire again hitting it in the back, and It growls.

Faster than you can understand it drags John screaming back down the hallway until your flashlight only captures the dust swirling in the dark once again.

You run.

————

It’s like a black hole.

Like the photographs of your memories of that night have been burned in the middle, leaving only the most horrific, over exposed snapshots to haunt you when you least expect it.

A whisper of snowflakes take nest in your hair, the rest dancing around in street lights, the road desolate and quiet save for your whimpering and limping down the sidewalk.

You don’t even know how you stumbled home, the Belarusian cold numbing every part of you. Your tears are frozen against your cheeks as you fling open the doors to the ballet company.

Those on watch have guns on you before you can blink, trying to figure out who and what and why.

They let up when they realize it’s you.

Only you.

You feel them shaking your shoulders, your body seizing in pain and your mouth blubbering a cry.

“Where is he?” They demand.

“Where is John?”

You can hardly make out who exactly is even talking to you, the world too bright and the faces simple shadows that shout questions and give orders.

Another shake.

“Answer me!”

You open your mouth, and your lips tremble, your whole body trembles.

“It…It got him…”

————

It’s been days.

You’ve hardly seen the outside of your room.

They’re treating cuts, the chunk of skin missing on your knee and your swollen ankle, the mild frostbite on your fingers. You hardly even notice when they enter and when they leave.

You’re not sure why you haven’t been punished.

You know The Director doesn’t take failed missions lightly, but you wonder if it has to do with what happened to John.

John.

You just keep hearing his screams bouncing off the walls ringing in your ears. You blame yourself. You blame how you didn’t do anything to stop it, how you didn’t run towards him, try to fight. You also know deep down that if you had, you’d be as good as dead.

Just like him…

Your heart aches so deeply you don’t know what to do with it.

They teach you here not to form relationships with one another for a reason, and you suppose you know why now.

This pain was unimaginable.

You don’t even know how to explain what you and John had. It was moments of softness when all eyes were closed. It was breaths in the cold as you share a secret cigarette on the fire escape outside your window. It was hands exploring just what one another had in the dark beneath your bedsheets.

You aren’t sure if you could call it love. If you deserve to call it love. But the pain of never having it again doesn’t lie.

Your days continue with cooling bowls of soup outside your door, and the covers over your head while your mourn.

————

“Tell me again what happened.”

The Director’s voice has no emotion. She sits back in her chair, her office lush and extravagant, rich smells of incense fill your nose as smoke from their fragrance and her cigarette billow in the room. The fireplace roars and cracks in your silence, your eyes unfocused on the floor.

“It came out of nowhere,” you speak slow, concise about what happened, too many details bringing too much hurt.

“It targeted Jardani, and it bit him. I shot It, but it didn’t matter, It already had him, and It dragged him away.”

“And ’it‘ looked like…?”

“I already told you… It wasn’t like us, it was something else. Something too tall, too skinny, too many teeth…”

“You expect me to believe that пачвара, that a…monster, took Jardani?” Doubt was one of her specialities.

“You can believe what you want. I know what I saw. It was not human.” You grit your teeth, the pain of having to relieve what happened combined with her probing and doubt leaving you short-toned.

Your almost surprised in yourself with how you’re talking to her, but losing all will to care.

She says nothing, mulling over what you’ve said.

The fire sizzles and snaps loudly.

“There still must be a punishment for failing to complete your assigned task.”

“There is no punishment that could hold a flame to what I’ve just experienced.”

—————

You’ve been stripped of everything.

No one is allowed to glance your way. No one shall speak to you.

You take the stage nightly after everyone else has run their routine.

You’ve lost The Director her most prized weapon, her most cherished son. For that, you must pay.

“You are not dismissed. You are reclaimed. You will dance every set he ever touched. Alone. Night after night, until the ghost of him is burned into your muscle memory.” Her voice echoes in your head as you begin, the stage silent except for your breathing.

“No name. No partners. No contact.”

A pause. Her voice softened for just a moment, sickly sweet.

“Perhaps, in your silence, he’ll hear you calling. And if not…”

She turned her back on you like you were already buried.

“Then we dance for the dead.”

Your feet strike the stage with precision. Your muscles tight and controlled, your hands trying to achieve the same strength, the same flow, as that of what John had. You twirl into his signature pose, leg wobbling and forcing you to give up on landing it, and you know it will take weeks before you’ll even come close to being what Jardani was.

You start his routine again.

And again.

And again.

The ghost of him your only partner in this hell.

—————

The days pass, and your body aches nightly, you try to keep your bloody feet from failing you with cloth bandages wrapped around them tight. It feels as if you haven’t slept since that night. You simply lie awake until the hours pass, facing the plain aging wall of your tiny bedroom made for one.

You hold your pillow, eyes following the cracks in the wall when you hear a creaking on the rusty fire escape outside your window.

Instinct takes over and you’ve instantly sat up, head swerving around to monitor just where the sound has emerged from, a shadow crossing your bedroom floor as something moves out of sight from the window.

You jump out of bed, flinging the window open and squinting as the icy night air quickly chills you to the bone. You scan the dark alleyway outside, looking for any sign of movement or life, your body cold in your skivvies.

The night is just as lonely as you are out there.

—————

He watches from the shadows as you close the window, your scent hanging heavy in the freezing night air. His gums are throbbing, and the pit in his stomach aches with want just from smelling you. It’s delicious, sharp and sweet to his senses, a fine liquor mixed with the smell of dark cherries and almond. A shaky hand has to wipe the drool from his chin as his tongue lusts for you.

He doesn’t even know why he’s come.

He knows what kind of monster he is now.

Something that can never be trusted.

Something that can never be safe.

And yet, he’s crawled his way back to you.

His eyes shine animal-bright in passing car lights, fangs extending longer from bloodlust.

Jardani knows he must do what he does best if he’s to ever have a chance of coming face to face with you again.

If he can want you, but not taste you, then he may still be some semblance of a man.

He must learn control.

——————

No human blood. No animal blood. Nothing. Jardani trains in front of mirrors that do not see him, goes through the motions of routines he knows the memory of deep in his muscles. He focuses on how long he can last without breaking, each attempt longer than the other.

“I once learned to throw a knife through a man’s eye without blinking. I can learn this too.”

He repeats this to himself between push ups, keeping his body busy and moving as much as possible.

When he does break, he does so without carnage, without killing and draining his prey dry like a beast. He controls his kill. Leaves no drop of blood undrank, returns back to his chosen hovel, an abandoned warehouse near the studio, without a mess of blood on him.

His first kill, instinct.

His second, survival.

His third, choice.

———————

It wasn’t easy sneaking into the studio, but Jardani knew of the most secret ins and outs of this place. He moves like a wolf in the shadows, slipping across the grid above the catwalk with ease.

He narrows his eyes, zoning in on just who’s below on the stage, carefully studying a few of his former fellow students as they finish up their routine for the night. There’s a few minutes of pause, some chatter backstage as most of the students head back to their rooms for the night. Finally, even The Director leaves and the studio falls silent.

That’s when you float out onto the stage, ballet slippers en pointe, holding all of your pain in the perfect precision of your body. You’re shroud in flowing white, a ghost that dances alone and for no one. His breath is held.

You begin Adagio, slow and fluid, an extension of yourself, before working your way into an Arabesque, arms held out, searching, reaching for someone who’s not there. You twist and flip, having to catch yourself, when you should be dancing with a partner who shares the burden of the dance, who guides your weight to where it should be. You move as if you may fall any minute, as if he may still be there to catch you.

Jardani can smell your scent wafting up into the rafters, the sweat and the rosin on your slippers, that sweet swirling scent of your blood that threatens to drive him mad. He grips the metal of the grid, gritting his teeth and trying to stop the hunger that grows within him.

“You must resist her. You must not give into the temptation of her blood.”

But oh, how he wants.

He wants not only your blood.

But you.

Your body, your warmth, your fingertips on his chest as you moan in pleasure underneath him. He wants to hear you say his name like a prayer in the dark.

Hunger clawed up his throat. His fangs throbbed with want and pressed down against his tongue.

He imagined descending the ropes like a phantom, pressing his mouth to the hollow of your neck, inhaling that sweet scent from the source and feeling your pulse flit against his lips.

Not biting.

Not yet.

Just having you.

He wanted to bury himself in you, take everything with greed. Bury in your scent, your heat, your pain.

But he couldn’t.

Couldn’t touch you without unraveling. He could barely be this close now without thoughts of himself drinking deeply from you creating fuzz of noise in his head he could hardly ignore.

Instead, he steadied himself as much as he could, attempting to hold on as long as possible, to prove to himself that he could stand it, he could be in the same room as you, someone made so perfectly for his new, monstrous tastes.

He crouches in the rafter, shaking with want and salivating at the thought of letting go.

Wanting to hold you.

Wanting to feed.

Wanting to take all that pain away.

But the dead don’t get love stories.