Blood Debt

The bass drops.

Mira feels it in her chest, that thump-thump-thump that drowns out everything else. The crowd at Neon pulses around her, bodies slick with sweat, neon lights painting everyone in shades of electric blue and hot pink.

She shouldn't be here.

She has a presentation at 8 AM. A thesis defense in two weeks. A life that doesn't include getting blackout drunk at a club on a Wednesday night.

But her ex posted engagement photos today.

To someone he met two months ago.

So fuck it. Fuck responsibility. Fuck everything.

"Another!" she shouts at the bartender, sliding her empty glass forward.

He raises an eyebrow but pours. Good man.

The tequila burns going down. Burns away the image of Marcus in a suit, grinning like an idiot, some blonde woman hanging off his arm with a rock the size of a small planet on her finger.

Three years.

Three years of her life, and he proposes to someone else after eight weeks.

The room tilts.

Okay. Maybe one drink too many.

Mira pushes away from the bar, steadying herself. The bathroom. She needs cold water on her face. Maybe to cry in a stall for five minutes. The usual post-breakup club protocol.

She weaves through the crowd, ignoring the hands that try to grab her waist, the voices that shout for her attention. The emergency exit is closer than the bathroom, and suddenly she needs air more than anything.

She hits the door.

Cool October air rushes over her skin.

And then she sees him.

At first, she thinks he's dead.

The man is crumpled against the brick wall, half-hidden behind a dumpster. Dark hair falls across his face. His shirt—designer, expensive, the kind she could never afford—is soaked in something that looks black under the dim security light.

Blood.

That's blood.

"Oh my god." Mira stumbles forward, her heels catching on broken concrete. "Hey. Hey, are you okay?"

Stupid question. He's obviously not okay.

She drops to her knees beside him, hands hovering uselessly. Should she call 911? Apply pressure to the wound? She took a first aid course in college but that was four years and approximately ten thousand brain cells ago.

He groans.

His eyes open.

Mira's breath catches.

They're gold.

Not brown, not amber—gold, like coins, like fire, like something that shouldn't exist in a human face. They glow faintly in the darkness, and for a moment, she's frozen.

"You need to run." His voice is rough, broken. "Get away from me."

"You're hurt—"

"Run."

But she doesn't.

She doesn't because something in those golden eyes looks terrified, and not of her. Of something else. Something coming.

"I'm calling 911," she say...